If you’re just getting up to speed on chatbots and copilots, you’re already falling behind. Talk in Silicon Valley now is squarely focused on "agents" — artificial intelligence that can handle multistep chores like onboarding clients, approving expenses and not just routing but actually responding to customer-service requests, all with minimal human supervision.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman calls agents "the next giant breakthrough.” Salesforce has already signed deals to install AI agents at more than 200 companies including Accenture, Adecco Group, FedEx, International Business Machines, and RBC Wealth Management.

"We're really at the edge of a revolutionary transformation,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on the software company’s most recent earnings call. "This is really the rise of digital labor.”