As artificial intelligence becomes ever more integrated into the way we work and live, the world is bracing for disruption, speakers at Indeed FutureWorks 2026 warned.
“We’re at the beginning of probably what will be one of the greatest transformations of our society and our businesses ever,” Marc Benioff, chair, CEO and co-founder at Salesforce, said Sept. 3 during a panel discussion. “In some areas, it is a little bit different — it’s a little bit scary because it’s unknown. But we’re in a new world. We’re all getting in the Waymo for the first time.”
From the stage in Phoenix, Arizona, one of more than a dozen U.S. cities in which Waymo operates its autonomous robotaxi service, the panelists urged that, despite technology-driven change, there will remain an important role for humans to fill in tomorrow’s workforce.
“I think we’re overestimating the ability of AI, and we’re underestimating the ability of the human being,” said Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba, president and CEO of Indeed and Recruit Holdings.
While there are many tasks a human can complete better than AI, “nobody likes to do the repetitive tasks every day,” Idekoba said. “We need to have a lot of AI tools to automate many repetitive tasks to maximize the ability of a human being.”
At Salesforce, the future is in humans and AI agents working together, Benioff said — what he referred to as “a dramatic agentic transformation.”
Engineers are augmented by coding agents, which write code at the direction of the engineers. Salespeople are aided by qualification agents that figure out what potential clients are interested in. Customer service representatives receive requests that clients have escalated to a human, after first working with an agent.
“I would say most companies are not quite yet an agentic enterprise, getting the efficiency and the effectiveness that you can get, but we are all on this journey together,” Benioff said.
AI agents can also fill gaps created by a shrinking workforce and help companies deal with skills shortages, Idekoba said. It is important, he said, for HR leaders to think about how to redesign their workforce to “work with AI to maximize the potential of the human being.”
New jobs, too, are being created, he said. While some processes are being automated by AI, companies are also hiring AI ethics managers, AI conversation designers and AI prompt designers.
“We’re really in a new, exciting world, an agentic world,” Benioff said.