Jackie Snow
Silicon Valley says 2025 is the year AI grows up and gets a job. Tech leaders envision armies of AI agents — autonomous digital workers that can actually get things done, not just chat. But after years of bold AI promises and mixed results, Wall Street analysts are questioning whether this trillion-dollar bet will finally pay off.
On one side stands tech leaders like Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s (CRM) CEO and one of tech’s most ardent AI optimists, who took to the cover of Time (which he owns) to say we’re entering an “Agentic Era” — one in which autonomous AI workers will unlock “massive capacity” and fundamentally redefine work as we know it.
On the other, Goldman Sachs warns that the roughly $1 trillion being poured into AI infrastructure may yield surprisingly modest returns, with skeptics arguing the technology isn’t yet capable of solving the complex problems needed to justify such massive investment.
The gulf between these perspectives couldn’t be wider. Benioff envisions AI agents that will work independently alongside humans, handling everything from customer service to inventory management without human intervention. In his view, these digital workers will drive unprecedented productivity gains and GDP growth, creating far more jobs than they displace. He points to early success stories like College Possible, a nonprofit that deployed an AI college counselor in just one week to support thousands of students who previously had limited access to guidance.
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