Marc Benioff warns AI industry not to repeat social media's harms

Benioff's warning did not come out of nowhere. For years he has been an outspoken critic of social media companies, declaring in 2018 that "Facebook is the new cigarettes" and calling for greater government regulation of the industry. His message now is that AI companies should not repeat those same mistakes.

The timing matters. His comments follow Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's weekend essay calling for frontier AI labs to slow the pace of model development so safety measures can catch up. Salesforce itself is closely tied to the AI boom: last month it unveiled Claudeforce, which includes a plugin letting clients use Anthropic's Claude on customer data inside Salesforce. On Tuesday, Amodei appeared on stage during Benioff's keynote and said, "I think that's the way to lead the industry forward, to set an example, to say that everyone can always be better."

What Benioff did not do is join the calls for a slowdown, which leaves the practical question open. The stakes appear to hinge on whether his responsibility message changes how Salesforce builds and partners on AI, or stays a general appeal to peers in San Francisco and beyond.