Imagine going to a staff meeting and being second-guessed by Einstein. Well, that’s what happens at Salesforce—sort of.
Chief executive Marc Benioff told Davos attendees on Thursday that, at a senior staff meeting every Monday for the last year, one seat has been occupied by the company’s “artificial intelligence” software, which is called Einstein.
“I ask Einstein, ‘I heard what everybody said but what do you actually think?'” Benioff said, according to a CNBC report.
Benioff explained that Einstein recently upset a European employee by saying “Well, I don’t think this executive is going to make their number, I’m so sorry,” before identifying the problems at hand.
While this early AI deployment is unusual, to say the least, it’s probably unsurprising that it’s happening at Salesforce (CRM).
The cloud software company has been very bullish on AI, having last year launched a $50 million fund to invest in startups that are deploying such technology.
Salesforce revealed Einstein’s existence a year and a half back, bringing together technologies it had recently acquired.
The company has been pitching the Einstein AI—which it originally wanted to call “Optimus Prime“—as a tool for things like identifying sales leads more quickly and efficiently. It is trying to encourage the functionality’s incorporation into a variety of business applications.