Unique Research · Insight · August 2, 2024 · Clara Shih, CEO, Salesforce AI
Key points
- Trust: 74% of the public worry about unethical AI use; 63% about bias — enterprises must build on trust and transparency.
- Data foundation: 86% of tech decision-makers say output quality tracks input data quality, freshness, and security.
- Use cases forming: 92%+ of sales/service/marketing/commerce teams considering or already using AI (content, comms, process).
- Skills & policy lag: 56% of workers believe genAI will transform their roles; only 21% say their company has a clear AI use policy.
FOMO time
Salesforce State of Data and Analytics: 77% of business leaders feel genAI FOMO — marketing 88%, sales 78%, service 73% (Nov survey; little reason to think July 2024 cooled). Shih: “Most executives worry they’ll miss AI’s upside — and they’re right. This looks like internet 1998: huge opportunity and huge hype. How do we filter signal and find high-impact enterprise use cases?”
Show us the money — and the value
After 18 months of over-promise, responsible vendors (Salesforce among them) try to manage expectations; many non-tech execs still treat genAI as a magic key. Zuckerberg’s “multi-year” framing hit Meta’s stock; Pichai faced Wall Street pressure to keep investing for later returns. Shih on impatience: companies don’t want siloed, hard-to-customize buys — they need turnkey demos for the board and configurability per business unit. First-year myth: “just plug ChatGPT into the org.” Reality: data-leak risk, failed private-LLM rushes, and the need for per-user context (same forecast prompt, different answers for two sellers). Context data is what makes an LLM production-ready.
Bottom line (Shih): like late-90s “is the internet overhyped?” — yes in the cycle, and the winners will be transformative after several experiment cycles and years. That’s why she calls it AI’s 1998 moment.