I am always
excited to sit down
with our next guest,
Salesforce Co-founder,
Chief Technology Officer
of Slack, Parker Harris.
This is our fourth
Dreamforce together.
Not that I'm
counting, but it is.
Most people ever
in a long time.
It's kind of
amazing, yeah.
So Agentforce has
been the centerpiece
Give me a sense of
how big Agentforce is.
And where does
it rank in terms
of sort of all the
Salesforce innovations?
Well, I think generative
AI is the biggest
thing that's happened in
technology, possibly ever.
But certainly, you know,
when you think about,
Salesforce started
with the internet,
and that was a huge
disruption to everyone,
I think this is a
bigger disruption.
And what we're
doing is applying
what we did 25 years ago
and bringing the power
of AI to all of the
trailblazers, all
of the customers
and partners
Clearly, there's been
an emphasis on humans
Why is that so important?
Well, I think everyone
has this doom and gloom
that agents and AI is
going to take everything
And I don't
think that's ever
happened in the
history of technology.
Technology has
changed things.
And people certainly will
need to be retrained.
There's going to be
new capabilities.
But look at the Saks
demo that we just did.
That was such a good
demo, by the way.
It really was a really
helpful walkthrough.
But if you think about
that demo, what Saks wants
is they want their
employees to be stylists.
They want to work
with you and say,
that's a beautiful dress.
And if you would
like something else,
let me help you
with your style.
You know your
style the best.
You don't want to
talk to a robot.
You don't want to talk to
an agent about your style.
That's very, very
sensitive to you.
And you want to feel like
you're getting tailored.
So we want to make sure
that the humans have
So what about the
example on that
Do we really need
a human to walk
through OK,
you bought this
and you want a
different size,
and you can pick
it up in the store?
Why not have an AI
agent do that for you?
And so it's the two
working together.
Or in the call center, the
same thing might happen.
And you want
to hand it off
to that stylist at
the right point.
And so how are you
going to do that?
That's the
power of the one
And I thought that
example of how
natural the conversation
was with AI in the Saks
Let's talk a little
bit about Slack.
The last time we
had a conversation--
I had to get a
couple other--
I think I'm missing
the keynote.
You know how much
trouble I would be in?
How will agents
work in Slack?
Well, if you
think of Slack,
Slack has always been a
conversational interface
And if you're going
to get work done
in working with AI,
where else are you
going to do that
but in Slack?
So in Slack, you're
going to have
the agents coming to you
in the user interface.
So they will
be just as you
saw in the lightning
interface, is what
we call the UI--
much of the UI,
I'm just going to
pull up agent for us.
I'm going to pull up my
SDR agent, my service
agent, whatever, my
stylist agent, maybe.
And I'm going to
work with them.
Or in-channel,
where you're
working with
humans, you're
going to start
to see, I've
got five humans working
together today with you.
What's the plan for today?
Actually, we have
more than that.
We're all working
together on Soledad's show
But what if we had
some AI agents in there
Like hey, can I
help you with that?
And let me summarize
the morning.
And let's bring
it all together.
And we're going
to work together
in that conversational
interface, humans and AI
You've got the
keynote coming up
If you're not at
the door right now,
please go right now while
you're listening to this.
You're going to really
hear three things.
One is, Slack is about
getting work done.
So we're making
that even better.
We've added cool
features like lists
and huddles and canvases.
And then we have
Slack AI, which
is, in the flow of work,
if you're doing a search,
let's answer your question
in natural language
and actually answer
that question.
Let's summarize those
channels for you
that you don't really
need to go look at.
Let's help you create
workflow with AI.
Then, of course,
Agentforce.
It is the place
for Agentforce.
We want a whole area
to talk about, well,
What can I do with the
Agentforce in Slack?
What kind of data does
it have access to?
All that Slack data, all
of the structured data
and data cloud, all
of it coming together.
And then finally, it is a
conversational interface
There are a lot of
people building AI there.
We would love for them
to use Slack also.
So Adobe, if I want to
go use Adobe Firefly--
it's an AI to go
create images for me.
And Adobe is very
good at images.
Why not just do that
within the context
of Slack so you'll
also see that?
So we know an
AI, obviously,
the structured
data, grabbing
data sets and information
makes a lot of sense.
But in Slack, it
seems like there's
a lot of unstructured
data, just a lot of kind
of random things
that become
parts of individuals'
conversations.
Can AI help organize that?
So if you think
about all those,
we couldn't do
this before.
You have all this
unstructured data,
these conversations,
our conversation now,
or if we were exchanging
Slack messages.
What you can do with AI
is called vectorization.
you seem to have gotten
deeply technical,
Soledad, because I
was watching earlier--
It was a really clear
keynote, I tell you.
And there have been a lot
of technical discussions.
But you take an AI LLM,
and you create a vector.
The mathematicians
are taking
over the world,
by the way,
from all those
conversations.
And then you
can say, well,
what conversations
would help
And it will say, what are
similar conversations?
Is the power of
these vectors
and this math and
the AI, and it's
going to take all that
conversational data that's
relevant to answer
your question,
and it's going
to combine it
with the structured data.
So you can say,
for example,
tell me how the account
team closed that deal.
That's an
interesting question.
You might say, well,
they made these calls.
That's structured
information.
But then you
might be like,
they also met with the
chief information officer.
They had this
conversation.
It's going to
combine all of that
together and summarize
it and tell you,
There are some people
who are not on Slack.
Because I think some
people think of it as--
It's a messaging
platform for my workers.
And it seems like
it could be with AI
Slack is about
getting work done.
So many people
start with Slack,
and, I'm just sending
you a message.
It's an entertaining way
to have conversations.
But if you want
to get work done,
I want to talk about
work within a channel.
And then when I'm within a
channel, I want workflow.
I want to connect to
my other applications.
I want the AI to help me,
to go out and summarize
that channel to create
the workflow for me.
We have something
called Slack templates.
If you remember years
ago, Salesforce came out
We have a
beautiful platform
where you can build apps.
In Slack, you can build
apps with workflows,
with channels, with
canvases, with lists.
To do project
management, for example,
that's getting work done.
It's just not
sending messages.
There are
experts out there
that know how to do that.
But why not
just say, here?
Project management, click.
Now you're managing
your project.
But then you can take
it and make it your own.
It's what we've
done for 25 years.
We're doing it
in Slack now.
Parker Harris, always
nice to see you.
I know you have to run
off to your keynote.
Always a pleasure
to see you.
