AFFILIATE MARKETING
Salesforce CEO: AI Agents Could Replace Hiring Gig Workers
For $2 a conversation, a new AI agent from Salesforce can answer questions from customers and schedule meetings — without a human being needed for oversight.
The AI agent technology, which Salesforce announced earlier this week at its annual Dreamforce event, has the potential to disrupt jobs currently held by human workers. Nearly three million people were employed as customer service representatives in 2022, with the majority (66%) being women, according to Data USA.
Related: Worried About AI Stealing Your Job? A New Report Calls These 10 Careers ‘AI-Proof’
Salesforce knows that its new technology carries the power to replace what could have been human hires. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on Tuesday that the new AI agents allow companies to forgo hiring new employees or “gig workers” in more hectic periods of time, per Bloomberg.
“We want to get a billion agents with our customers in the next 12 months,” Benioff said.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Adopting a hiring freeze, and then tasking AI with filling in the gaps, is a strategy being used by other companies like “buy now, pay later” payments firm Klarna.
One year ago, Klarna simply decided not to hire — not even replacements for people who left. Departing employees and an AI-induced hiring freeze have cut Klarna down from the 5,000-person workforce it was last year to the 3,800 people it had as of late August, without any layoffs.
In late August, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told The Financial Times that the company wants to get its workforce down to 2,000 employees within the next few years with this approach.
“Not only can we do more with less, but we can do much more with less,” he told the Financial Times.
Klarna isn’t the only company using AI to automate tasks that humans once did. Within the next year, three in five large companies in the U.S. intend to use AI for everything from financial reporting to marketing campaigns, according to a June study from Duke University.
Goldman Sachs estimates that AI could replace or impact 300 million jobs by 2030, affecting writing, translation, and customer service gigs.
Related: JPMorgan Says Its AI Cash Flow Software Cut Human Work By Almost 90%
AFFILIATE MARKETING
X Rival Bluesky Gains 1.2 Million New Users in 2 Days
X users may be migrating to bluer skies after a major change.
Bluesky is an open, ad-free social network that grew out of Twitter, now X, in 2019. The platform announced on Thursday that half a million new users signed up within a day of X announcing that it would be changing up its blocking feature “soon.” Blocked users on X will be able to see public posts but not like, reply or engage with them in any other way.
Although X said the change was to prevent people blocking others from sharing sensitive information about people they have blocked, X users stated that the move would support stalking, render the Block function useless and violate Google Play Store and Apple App Store requirements.
Related: Jack Dorsey Explains Bluesky Exit: ‘Literally Repeating All the Mistakes We Made’ at Twitter
Bluesky stated on Friday that more than 1.2 million people have signed up to use the platform since Wednesday.
congratulations everyone, we have now passed 12 million people total on bluesky!!! ?
over 1.2M new people have joined bluesky in the last two days — welcome!! ???
— Bluesky (@bsky.app) October 18, 2024 at 1:42 PM
Soon we’ll be launching a change to how the block function works.
If your posts are set to public, accounts you have blocked will be able to view them, but they will not be able to engage (like, reply, repost, etc.).
— Engineering (@XEng) October 16, 2024
Bluesky also experienced a surge in users last month after X shut down operations in Brazil on August 30. Within a week of the ban, Bluesky added 3 million new users, 85% of whom were from Brazil. X resumed operations on October 9, but not before Bluesky surged to 10 million users in September.
The platform now has 12 million users total, per a Friday announcement.
Meta’s Threads also appears to be experiencing a surge in users; it is currently first under the top free apps for iPhone list, with Bluesky coming in fifth. Threads surpassed 175 million users in July.
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Netflix Adds 5 Million Users, Analysts Predict Price Hike
Netflix posted its third-quarter earnings on Thursday and beat Wall Street predictions for both subscribers added and overall revenue. Meanwhile, analysts forecast that the streaming giant will soon raise its prices.
Netflix’s revenue for the third quarter was $9.825 billion, slightly more than the $9.769 billion analysts had predicted. The company also added 5.1 million subscribers, well over the 4 million additional users investors expected.
“Engagement, our best proxy for member happiness, remains healthy,” the report noted. “Through the first three quarters of 2024, view hours per member amongst owner households (the clearest view of engagement trends post the introduction of paid sharing) increased year over year.”
Related: Netflix Updated Its Famous Employee ‘Keeper Test’ in a New Culture Memo — Here’s What’s Changed
Netflix currently has over 600 million users with each one spending about two hours per day on the platform, per the report.
Will Netflix Raise Prices in the U.S.?
Thursday’s earnings report may not mean subscribers will avoid a price hike. The streaming company is increasing prices in Spain and Italy on Friday, and analysts from investment firms including Oppenheimer & Co. stated before the earnings release that a price hike may be on the way for U.S. users, too.
Netflix currently costs $6.99 per month for a standard plan with ads, $15.49 per month for a standard plan with up to two devices watching at the same time, and $22.99 per month for a premium plan with up to four devices supported.
Related: How to Hire Like Netflix — ‘This Is a Completely Different Way of Thinking About Human Capital’
AFFILIATE MARKETING
Nvidia’s ‘Insane’ AI Chip Demand Leads to Record Share Price
Nvidia is the second most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of over $3 trillion. At market close on Monday, shares of the AI chipmaker hit an unprecedented high of $138.07 before falling to $131.32 at the time of writing.
Nvidia’s performance is tied to strong demand for its AI chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated recently that demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip is “insane” and “everybody wants to have the most.” Nvidia expects to ship enough of the new chip to make several billion dollars.
Nvidia was briefly on the edge of unseating Apple as the most valuable company in the world on Monday. Last week, Nvidia shares grew by $400 billion in five days, more than the entire market cap of Costco.
Huang also said last month that demand was his biggest worry, or what kept him up at night.
“We have a lot of people on our shoulders, and everybody is counting on us,” he said, adding that having access to Nvidia’s technology was a “really emotional” point for the company’s clients.
Nvidia counts the biggest tech players among its clients: Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Google contribute to more than 40% of its revenue. Nvidia’s earnings beat analyst expectations last quarter, with revenue growing 122% year-over-year, the fourth quarter in a row of growth over 100%.
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