3 SALESFORSALESFORCE FUTURESCE FUTURES ANTICIPATING PERSONAL AGENTS: VIABILITY Given all of this economic potential In their recent HBR article on how to build and how much advantage agents will trustworthy assistants, Kathy Baxter and confer on their users, one additional Yoav Schlesinger of the OEHU point out possibility is that state-sponsored four key issues that will undermine trust agents step in to democratize access. in agents: integration and amplification, In this world, access to powerful AI, as a lack of a human in the loop, poor Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently data quality, and responsibility gaps. put it, is seen as a right, not a privilege, Technical concerns, such as security, and the line between the public and reliable grounding, and protocols for private sector begins to blur. In a later cross-ecosystem access challenge section of this magazine, we imagine some of the loftier fever dreams of one way this future might play out. a future dominated by agents. Early incidents like Air Canada being forced to acknowledge a policy invented by a TRUST WILL BE ESSENTIAL FOR chatbot show how far we still need to go EFFECTIVE PERSONAL AGENTS before companies and consumers can Trust, Salesforce’s number one value, trust personal AI across all of the use will play a fundamental role in shaping cases mentioned here and elsewhere. personal AI futures. Agent relationships are, by default, intimate and ongoing. Recent research by Salesforce points to Agents’ need for context pushes trust to the a gap between customers’ overall trust forefront, suggesting a world where aligning in companies and their belief those with human goals becomes the primary companies will use AI responsibly. For measuring stick for personal AI and a must- example, while 76% of customers have ingredient for long-term customer trust companies to make honest claims relationships. Trust concerns about agents about their products and services, only stem from ethical and technical issues. 57% trust them to use AI ethically. This trust gap points to the importance of Salesforce’s Office of Ethical and Humane designing trustworthy AI from the outset, Use (OEHU) is a leading voice on ethical particularly when it comes to considering concerns, and an excellent source of the role humans will play in AI systems. responsible AI frameworks, guidelines, and best practices that help us anticipate and guard against trust failures. The OEHU has implemented consequence scanning in how Salesforce designs and builds products. ISSUE 1: PERSONAL AI | 25