Sick of all those darn employees? Tired of hearing about “quiet quitters” and “barely minimum Monday” workers? Struggling to deal with the high cost of health insurance, retirement plans, regulations and taxes? Fear not! Big tech is coming to your rescue with AI agents to replace your employees.
Thanks to the good people at Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Salesforce – and a bunch of up and coming startups – small and mid-sized companies can now begin to harness the power of AI to get rid of all those workers.
Of course, that’s not exactly the narrative Silicon Valley wants you to hear. But pay no attention to what those companies are saying. Instead, take a look at what they’re doing.
Microsoft Introduces Sales AI Agents To Replace Your Employees
For starters, Microsoft has released a new AI tool to replace your employees on your sales team. According to Microsoft, the newly launched Sales Agent will help you eliminate those sales administrators who are researching leads, setting up meetings, reaching out to customers and even closing “low-impact” sales leads. It leverages either it’s Dynamics CRM application or Salesforce as its data model.
In case you weren’t aware, Microsoft has also amassed a gigantic ecosystem of AI agents, with – according to VentureBeat – over 100,000 organizations “creating or editing AI agents through its Copilot Studio since launch – a milestone that positions the company ahead in one of enterprise tech’s most closely watched and exciting segments.” Do not forget that agents are literally doing the work of people. People that will no longer have any work to do. But enough about Microsoft. Let’s move on…to Amazon!
Amazon Forms A Group To Develop AI Agents To Replace Your Employees
Because just last week Amazon announced that it formed a new group specifically to help their AWS customers use AI to…you guessed it…replace employees. The focus group, led by an AWS executive, aims to “help users and customers automate more of their lives” but we all know what that means: new AI tools from one of the leading cloud service providers that will do the work of programmers, developers and other IT support people.
“We have the opportunity to help our customers innovate even faster and unlock more possibilities, and I firmly believe that AI agents are core to this next wave of innovation,” AWS’ CEO wrote. Using an agent instead of tech support? Try to find a business owner that would turn that opportunity down. Let’s see what Meta is doing, shall we?
Meta Has A New Customer Service Tool Using AI Agents To Replace Your Employees
The social media giant is now is offering a new customer service AI agent to help small businesses replace their employees. it’s a 24/7 service that can be used on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to answer questions – even by voice – as well as facilitate purchases from users. According to Fast Company businesses “can design these agents, which can operate both straight off of ads and also through DMs or Messenger, at no cost right now as the pilot program kicks off.” They can also delegate which tasks they want the AI agent to handle, and which tasks they want the AI to hand off to a live customer service representative,” assuming there are any left. Their agent can help manage returns, recommend products and purchase products.
Salesforce Create A Giant Exchange of AI Agents To Replace Your Employees
Not only is Salesforce participating in Microsoft’s replacement of employees with agents, but the CRM giant has also set up a giant “exchange” for developers to trade, share, collaborate and come up with all sorts of different methods for AI agents to replace your employees. It’s called AgentExchange which the company estimates will be part of a “$6 trillion ‘digital labor’ market” which sounds a lot like a place that uses technology to do the work instead of people. The company has already signed up 200 partners, including Google, DocuSign and Workday who are – or plan to – put together pre-packaged “agent solutions” that work off the Salesforce platform to…you guessed it…use AI agents to replace your employees.
ServiceNow Rolls Out An AI Agent To Supervise AI Agents To Replace Your Employees
All of these agents can just run amok, can they? ServiceNow doesn’t think so. Agents are proliferating to such an extent that the IT support platform that helps businesses automate and organize processes and services has released a tool to supervise all the AI agents that are replacing your employees. They call it the AI Agent Orchestrator and it’s music to the ears of any business owner who wants to employ dozens of AI agents to do the work of employees no longer on their payroll and needs an agent to manage all of these agents. The company is offering “thousands of prebuilt agents across IT, customer service, HR and more!!!” (I added in the exclamation marks) to “drive exponential productivity at scale.”
Other Startups Are Providing Tools For Creating AI Agents To Replace Your Employees
Don’t want to wait for big tech to help you use AI agents to replace your employees? No worries, you can use tools from Gallabox, Make, Relay or You.com to build your own AI agent solutions. Or you can join Thoughtly’s Agent Accelerator Program, which offers “seamless integration, expert customization, and comprehensive support to bring your AI agent to life.”
None of these companies will say that their agents are replacing employees. Instead they all make claims that their technology will “improve productivity” and “complement” workers. They say that companies are already facing worker shortages or lack the resources to grow and scale so these agents are offering a way to do more with an existing workforce. It’s not a bad argument. But c’mon…do you truly buy it? What business owner wouldn’t invest in agents instead of hiring people, with all of their related costs and responsibilities?
Make no mistake about it. Big tech companies are using AI agents to replace your employees.
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