Salesforce's AI Transformation Impact

Hi everyone,

Salesforce's big move to replace thousands of human roles with AI capabilities is causing quite a stir and leaves us pondering the future of work integration.

Meanwhile, the drama unfolds in the world of xAI as Elon Musk's team takes legal action against a former staffer for allegedly swiping trade secrets, raising questions about security and ethics in tech.

Also, check out our partners: Pacaso and Guru

Let's get right into it.

In this issue:

• 🤝 In Partnership: Own the next big win

• 🤿Deep Dive: Salesforce shifts staff after AI rollout

• 🖼️AI Art: Examples of great and trending AI art

• 🤝Supported by: Two days to level up your marketing game

• 🤿Deep Dive: xAI sues ex-staffer over trade secrets

• ⚒️Tool Snapshots: Tools for AI, no-code, and productivity

🤝IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PACASO

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🤿 DEEP DIVE

Marc Benioff and Salesforce Cut Support Roles after AI Agents Took Over More Work

Intelligence: Salesforce cut about 4,000 customer support roles after deploying AI agents while redeploying some staff to sales and other growth areas, according to CEO Marc Benioff.

• Support headcount fell from about 9,000 to about 5,000 this year as AI systems now handle roughly half of customer conversations, with humans managing the rest.

• Salesforce deployed Agentforce at the start of the year and says it reduced support case volume, so the company is no longer actively backfilling support engineer roles.

• Hundreds of employees were moved into professional services, sales, and customer success, which Benioff says increased distribution capacity.

• The company still employs about 76,000 people worldwide, and Benioff described the past eight months as the most exciting of his career, despite the cuts.

• AI-led outreach is addressing previously neglected demand, with Benioff claiming Salesforce failed to return more than 100 million leads over decades, and now an agentic sales system is calling back every contact.

🖼️ AI ART

Examples of great and trending AI art

🤝SUPPORTED BY GURU

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🤿 DEEP DIVE

Elon Musk’s xAI Sues Ex-Engineer Over Alleged Trade Secret Theft Tied to OpenAI

Intelligence: xAI filed a California federal lawsuit accusing former engineer Xuechen Li of taking Grok-related trade secrets to OpenAI and is seeking damages and a restraining order to block his move.

• xAI says Li worked on training and developing Grok and took confidential files on cutting-edge AI that it claims offer features superior to ChatGPT.

• The complaint says Li accepted a job at OpenAI this month, sold 7 million dollars in xAI stock, and copied files in July. xAI says he admitted to taking files and trying to cover his tracks in an August 14 meeting, with more material later found on his devices.

• xAI seeks unspecified monetary damages and an order preventing Li from joining OpenAI.

• xAI also sued OpenAI and Apple in Texas this week, alleging they monopolize AI chatbots on Apple devices.

• xAI claims the alleged theft could help OpenAI bolster ChatGPT with xAI features.

⚒️ TOOL SNAPSHOTS

Futuristic tools within AI, no-code, and productivity

• 👵 Vireel - AI-powered website & product selling tool for everyone. Payment required.

• 🔐 Venice - Open-source AI platform with blockchain for privacy protection. Free option available.

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• 💬 Lumi.new - Effortlessly build, launch websites and apps through chatting. Free option available.

ℹ️ ABOUT US

The Intelligent Worker helps you to be more productive at work with AI, automation, no-code, and other technologies.

We like real, practical, and tangible use-cases and hate hand-wavy, theoretical, and abstract concepts that don’t drive real-world outcomes.

Our mission is to empower individuals, boost their productivity, and future-proof their careers.

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