The AI Slowdown Debate Crashed Salesforce’s Party

Benioff roamed the audience while delivering his Dreamforce sermon, followed by a teleoperated camera on wheels that beamed his face to screens hanging from the cavernous room’s ceiling. Within minutes, he ordered up a graph of Salesforce’s annual revenue, which the company projects will top $46 billion in 2027, thanks in part to demand for its AI-powered products. The audience applauded. But hanging over the whole event was a dark question: Is artificial intelligence really worth risking all our lives for?

Between flashy software demonstrations of agents building dashboards, conference-goers watched Silicon Valley leaders debate whether the AI industry should keep barreling ahead or if the government needs to slow AI progress to prevent catastrophic risks stemming from the technology.