Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has issued a warning to the global technology industry. He has urged for an immediate regulation of artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that an unregulated AI technology can harm children, and regulation can prevent a repeat of the ‘social media failures’ that he says have harmed an entire generation. Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2026 in Davos, Switzerland, Benioff took a more balanced his role as a leader of an AI-driven company. While he described AI as a technology that’s powerful but “dangerous”, he also called for strict guardrails to protect children from it.“AI needs guardrails – evidence now proves kids must be protected, unlike social media’s failures. AI fuels our global growth, but not at any cost – we must protect kids, unlike the social media’s failures,” Benioff said in a post on X. He reshared a clip from his Bloomberg interview which he gave on the sidelines of WEF 2026.
Salesforce CEO compares unregulated AI to the ‘dangerous’ social media days
Benioff drew a direct parallel between the current unregulated state of AI and the early days of social media. He recalled his 2018 warnings, noting that government took concrete steps and it took them years to implement age restrictions and parental controls.“We’re letting all of this AI technology out fully unregulated. And, by the way, you remember, that’s true what we did with social media as well, and you probably remember what I said in 2018. here, you know, which was social media was becoming the same kind of very dangerous technology. And look, a lot of governments have made changes around social media now, so you go to a lot of countries,” Benioff said.“If you’re not 17-18 years old, you’re not going to use social media. There are controls. There are protections we need to get there with. There doesn’t need to be any more deaths, you know,” he warned.While talking about hallucinations, Benioff pointed out that the technical instabilities make the technology particularly risky for younger users. Generative AI models are prone to “hallucinations”, which means they generate entirely false or inappropriate information in a very confident manner. He also acknowledged that “AI is great” and “incredible”.“We need to be like taking this seriously, and AI is great. It’s incredible, but these models, you know, they’re inaccurate. They hallucinate. They’re kind of hard to control,” Benioff noted. The billionaire executive’s comments come at a time when Salesforce is aggressively integrating AI into its core business. He says the move is driving success but insists it must not come “at any cost.”
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