Four Ways Generative AI will Change the Future of Business

There’s a reason that 77% of business leaders are worried their company is missing out on generative AI: the promise of not just what technology can do, but its cumulative and expanding impact on business and industry. Here’s how Salesforce’s top minds see the next year of generative AI’s impact.

1. Generative AI will become fully operationalized for use across the enterprise.

“This starts with software development, customer service, sales, and marketing, but in reality, AI will ultimately touch every department and workstream. Another big step forward will come when large language models (LLMs) are tapped not just for content generation and analysis, but decision-making and workflow automation. As AI advances and features like AI Agents are deployed more widely, efficiency will increase, creating a cycle of improvement.

And while foundational LLMs will be the backbone of generative AI, companies will also start using a combination of smaller, domain-specific language models for cost, performance, and latency reasons.” – Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI

2. Data will continue to get democratized … and smarter.

“While analytics and dashboards are used widely to meet performance management needs, getting personalized insights for knowledge workers remains a challenge. In 2024, the focus on democratizing data and analytics will take a new turn. Data and analytics will become more proactive by automatically identifying anomalies in underlying business data, delivering insights in natural language, and providing users with the ability to ask questions and get answers quickly, without pulling in a data analyst.” – Southard Jones, Tableau Chief Product Officer, Salesforce

3. There will be a notable rise in the importance of design for enhancing customer experiences, product value, and market fit.

“There is a growing need to recognize the critical role of design in achieving goals and delivering products that customers not only find useful but enjoy using. The overall user experience will be paramount, and teams will need to take customer feedback into account and instill a design process to include prototyping, a commitment to user experience, and continuous improvement.

This shift will reflect a deeper commitment to the craft and personality of software brands and build stronger connections with customers.” – Ethan Eisman, SVP of Design, Slack

4. A new era of cyber defense will take shape to address new threats.

“As AI advances, we will continue to see more AI-powered attempts to infiltrate and exploit systems across the entire digital ecosystem. Bad actors are using the technology for everything from code generation, password cracking, exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, and identifying misconfigurations, to social engineering and deepfakes.

On the other hand, AI can help companies automate tedious tasks like recognizing anomalies, detecting fraud and phishing attempts, and predicting behaviors. This not only allows security teams to increase their efficiency, but to also identify threats quickly, on a large scale, and shorten response times.” – Kelly McCracken, SVP of Salesforce Detection and Response, Salesforce