The government should learn from its mistakes in regulating social media companies (it hasn't) and get out in front of artificial intelligence before the tech becomes too powerful, argued Salesforce (CRM) co-founder, chairman, and CEO Marc Benioff.
"I think the government is going to have to really step it up and really offer another level of regulation," Benioff told Yahoo Finance Live (video above) at the company's Dreamforce conference. He acknowledged that AI technology is developing "much faster" than those in the industry thought.
Benioff has been a vocal critic of the business practices of social media companies, famously saying in 2020 that Facebook (META) is the "new cigarettes."
The government "obviously failed [on social media regulation]," Benioff added. "They get an F for social media and how they've handled them. We've seen that play out. I hope that in AI they really step up and do the right thing."
As it stands, AI regulation has mostly been a dog and pony show between the government and tech leaders.
Just last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, and Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai were among those summoned to Washington to discuss artificial intelligence.
Musk reportedly warned about civilizational risks posed by AI, while others in the room stressed the opportunities with the technology.
Despite the well-publicized gathering of the industry's elite, the timeline for AI regulation remains wildly unclear. What any regulation would look like is also murky — meaning a wave of disruption is coming to businesses and society as large language models (LLMs) gain strength and widespread use.
"If AI is allowed to penetrate the global economy with only light regulation, the most likely outcome is higher growth but with a lot of disruption to existing industries," veteran Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid wrote in a new client note.
Tech investor will.i.am is concerned about AI's power to alter public perception.
"2024 is going to be a pretty unique time because we will have so many different types of duping agents out there, where you're not going to decipher truth," the musician told Yahoo Finance Live at Dreamforce. "We are barely dealing with fake news."
While Big Tech awaits AI guidelines of any form from regulators, a company like Salesforce is full steam ahead in trying to supercharge its profits by unleashing new AI tools across its various lines of business.
A Williams-Sonoma (WSM) exhibition at Dreamforce gave a glimpse into how Salesforce's AI is powering furniture recommendations. And Slack — a business Salesforce acquired in 2021 for $27.7 billion — had a booth explaining how businesses could use new AI features on the platform to build improved marketing campaigns.
"The AI revolution is here," Benioff said. The regulators aren't.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn. Tips on deals, mergers, activist situations, or anything else? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
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