Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, jabbed Microsoft again in his latest podcast appearance.
"Thank God we left that ‘Clippy’ copilot age behind us," he joked.
From there, he highlighted the transition to AI agents or "digital labor", which hundreds of thousands of organizations are already experimenting with.
Yet, most interestingly, Benioff teased what will come next: humanoid robots.
On the SuperhumanAI podcast, he explained: "We’re in the agentic age, and we’ll move into the robotic age at some point.
There are hundreds of companies working on these humanoid robots, and they could be very interesting with the models that they’re building.
The CEO referenced the ALOHA robot as an example, built by Stanford University, which learns from humans to cook, clean, and even do laundry.
Yet, as Benioff suggests, there are many others.
For instance, NEOA by 1X creates similar "home helpers" with a conversational interface to onboard feedback.
Soon, these may evolve into "office helpers", assisting with various office tasks, like running to the printer, carrying boxes, and mopping floors.
From a CX perspective, consider what such humanoids could mean for the store experience. Robot shelf-stackers, security guards, and store assistants could all become possible.
Soon, robot store assistants may even interact with customers and perform tasks such as calling them when their order is ready for pickup.
As such, Salesforce may link to these humanoids to track machine-to-customer, or possibly even machine-to-machine, interactions.
Elsewhere, some humanoids are already being tested in the workplace.
Consider the Boston Dynamics "Atlas" robot. It's already fitting into factory environments, sorting tasks, and - crucially - adapting to real-time feedback.
Yet, despite all the advancements, Benioff confessed that this is still very much the age of limited AI.
Nevertheless, he praised the pace of AI developments across the board.
