In 2023, business leaders were buzzing about generative AI but were unsure what it could really do for them. Sure, it could write essays and generate images, but could it improve business? By 2024, the question had shifted from “what is generative AI?” to “how exactly do I use it to create value?”
The Salesforce 360 Blog’s most-read artificial intelligence (AI) stories of the year reflect this shift.
Since ChatGPT’s debut in late November 2022, generative AI adoption has been staggering, surpassing the uptake of both the internet and personal computers. In just two years, the focus shifted from curiosity to action, as businesses raced to take advantage of AI’s transformative potential. From deep dives on the limitations of LLMs to a look at new techniques that make AI better, these are the most-read AI stories of the year.
Can an AI Assistant Make Us Faster and More Creative?
AI assistants promise to boost worker efficiency, a claim the Salesforce Research team tested and quantified. Specifically, they measured the time saved across three key areas: ramping up on new projects, conducting research, and turning data into visual assets. The conclusions are enlightening and reveal how we can put AI to use to level up our productivity.
LLMs and Copilots Alone Won’t Save You: Why You’re Doing Enterprise AI Wrong
This post makes the case that many businesses are misguided in their rush to train and deploy LLMs. They think these models and AI copilots, alone, can solve their AI challenges. But, what’s truly necessary for AI success is a complete system that integrates data, AI, and automation to answer questions and take action. These insights could save your organization a lot of time and headache.
What Is a Reasoning Engine?
Not only does this explainer describe what reasoning engines are, it digs into how they work, how they solve common business problems, and how they work with AI agents to execute complex multistep tasks. Reasoning engines are the brains of agentic AI, capable of mimicking human intelligence. Simply, it’s generative AI at another level.
Tiny Titans: How Small Language Models Outperform LLMs for Less
In 2024, the limitations of massive, one-size-fits-all LLMs (especially their cost and complexity) became apparent. This post illustrates how small language models — which are trained on a small, very specific, high-quality dataset geared toward a single task — pack a huge punch for a lot less.
11 (Human) AI Influencers You Need To Know
The buzz around AI is deafening, making it hard to know who to listen to. In this post, we identified 11 AI influencers worth following across tech, academia, AI regulation, and more. Since these experts are at the forefront of a movement that seemingly changes overnight, following them means you won’t be left behind.
How the Atlas Reasoning Engine Powers Agentforce
You wanted to understand not only what AI can do, but how it works. How do AI agents actually carry out multistep, complex tasks? This post explains how Salesforce’s Atlas Reasoning Engine generates a plan, evaluates and refines it, and decides what business process to use based on what the user needs.
AI Isn’t Taking Your Job – It’s Setting You up for a Better One. (Here Are 12)
As AI adoption spread in 2024, people started worrying about tech-driven job loss. But the more likely scenario is that people who have AI skills will replace people who don’t. These unique and emerging skills will open up a wealth of new opportunities. Job seekers will benefit from this May story.
What Is Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)?
LLMs were the hot topic of 2023, with everyone talking about their potential to revolutionize industries. In 2024, we learned there’s much more to AI — like how a technique called RAG produces far better prompt responses by using specific, up-to-date information from a database or other source (think social media feeds and news sites), instead of using pretrained knowledge from an LLM.
AI Agents for Business and Application Development
Autonomous AI agents are the next generation of AI, able to carry out complex multistep tasks on a worker’s behalf with minimal oversight. It’s not hard to imagine how they’ll profoundly change the way businesses operate and interact with customers. This post explores exactly how, and also how they’ll reshape software and software development.
How To Drive AI and Data Success With Salesforce
The real value of AI and data tools can only be realized if you employ skilled people who know how to use the technology effectively. This post, the most read of 2024, is a practical guide to the Salesforce certifications that give teams the necessary skills to develop ethical and responsible data and AI programs. It’s a great example of how businesses are prioritizing education and accountability to make sure their AI initiatives are effective and trustworthy.
2025: The year AI agents take off
As we predicted last year, 2024 was the year businesses invested in and implemented AI. What do we see coming for 2025? Our best guess is an unprecedented adoption of autonomous AI agents. Deloitte says that one-quarter of companies using generative AI today will deploy agents in 2025, growing to 50% by 2027. Stay tuned to the 360 Blog to make sense of this tectonic shift in workplace productivity, efficiency, and collaboration.
