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.

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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.

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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.

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Craig Newmark, the 71-year-old retired founder of Craigslist, has four focus areas for philanthropy: military families and vets, cybersecurity, journalism, and pigeon rescue.

On Wednesday, he pledged $100 million to support U.S. cybersecurity, bringing his total giving and pledges to $400 million since 2015.

^{Craig Newmark. Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images}

According to the Wall Street Journal, Newmark has already committed over 20% of the $100 million pledge to organizations and projects around cybersecurity. Common Sense Media, for example, received $2 million to support efforts like a cybersecurity awareness campaign for parents and teachers.

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Newmark was worth $1.3 billion in 2020 and pledged to give away almost all his wealth to charitable causes in December 2022. He told the Journal that his giving was inspired by the Judaic concept of tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world.“

Newmark’s approach is to find the right people, give them the resources they need, “and then get outta their way,” according to his philanthropy’s website. He doesn’t give organizations who receive grants requirements to hit certain targets.

Newmark has yet to commit $88 million of his latest $100 million pledge. Applications are open through his foundation’s website where he personally vets the proposals.

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Days after proposing to settle a data breach lawsuit for $30 million, 18-year-old genetic testing company 23andMe now faces another public hurdle: Seven independent directors of its board resigned on Tuesday through a pointed letter addressed to CEO Anne Wojcicki, who is now the only remaining member of the board.

The resigning directors, among whom were YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and Sequoia VC Roelof Botha, called out Wojcicki for not submitting a “fully financed, fully diligenced, actionable proposal” to take the company private over the past five months. They wrote that their strategic direction for 23andMe was different from Wojcicki’s.

“Because of that difference and because of your concentrated voting power, we believe that it is in the best interests of the Company’s shareholders that we resign from the Board rather than have a protracted and distracting difference of view with you as to the direction of the Company,” they stated.

Related: 23andMe DNA Technology Helps Family Find Kidnapped Daughter After 51 Years

Wojcicki, who co-founded the company in 2006, controls 49% of 23andMe votes. In July, she submitted a proposal to buy all the shares she didn’t already own at $0.40 per share and take the company private. A special committee created by the company rejected her proposal, stating that it wasn’t in the best interests of shareholders.

^{Anne Wojcicki. Credit: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Wojcicki told employees in a memo on Tuesday that she was “surprised and disappointed” by the resignations and would immediately begin finding replacement directors. She stated that “taking 23andMe private will be the best opportunity for long-term success.”

23andMe, which was valued at $6 billion in 2021 shortly after going public, is now a penny stock worth 34 cents per share at the time of writing. The company has until November 4 to bring its stock price up to at least $1 per share or risk being delisted.

23andMe has faced a number of public setbacks, including a data breach in October that impacted nearly 7 million accounts and appeared to target people with Chinese or Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Customers filed a class action lawsuit in January and 23andMe proposed a $30 million settlement earlier this month.

23andMe’s core product is a $99 ancestry kit that requires a customer to submit their spit in exchange for genetic insights. A $199 kit advertises health predisposition reports. The company is also developing drugs in-house and testing them.

Related: 23andMe Hackers Selling Stolen User Data, Including DNA Profiles of ‘Celebrities,’ on Dark Web