If you happen to’ve ever teamed up on a venture with a proficient coworker, you understand that two minds are higher than one. You doubtless every introduced distinctive abilities to the venture, provided totally different views, and challenged each other’s considering. You may need even made one another look smarter.
Guess what? You’ll be able to nonetheless collaborate with a supersmart colleague — solely now that coworker is prone to be synthetic intelligence (AI).
Human-AI collaboration is likely one of the most in-demand abilities at the moment, and your means to grasp it will probably show you how to not solely carry out at a better degree, however keep related. In truth, Salesforce calls human-AI collaboration one of many 10 prime enterprise abilities that staff must succeed.
“People who use AI are supercharged as a result of they’ve all that data on the ideas of their fingers,” mentioned Kaylin Voss, govt vp of gross sales, Agentforce and Knowledge Cloud, at Salesforce.
However like several collaboration, it’s a two-way avenue: It’s not simply what you get from AI, however what you give. The extra you perceive how AI works, and the higher you talk with it, the extra you’ll get out of it.
Let’s take a look at why this ability issues, and 4 methods you may grasp it.
How one Salesforce crew works with AI brokers — and how one can, too
Be taught what occurred when a help crew handled brokers not as instruments however as true crew members: It constructed belief, grew collectively, and received probably the most out of its brokers.
What’s human-AI collaboration?
Merely put, it’s the flexibility of individuals and AI to work collectively. It may well apply to generative AI, predictive AI, chatbots, and AI brokers. The magic lies within the totally different abilities people and AI convey to the equation.
AI excels at sample recognition, knowledge processing, and repetitive duties, whereas people provide empathy, essential considering, creativity, and cultural context. “They play to one another’s strengths and increase one another’s areas of problem,” mentioned Lori Niles-Hofmann, a Toronto-based instructional know-how and AI transformation strategist, and founding father of consulting agency 8Levers. “Collectively, they will obtain outcomes that neither may alone.”
Niles-Hofmann pointed to her personal work for example. As a result of a lot of her shoppers are in Europe, she usually woke to a flood of emails despatched in a single day. After too many mornings taking part in catch-up, she realized there was a greater means: An AI agent may handle her inbox. She created one and skilled it on her earlier emails so it might undertake her tone and voice.
Now, the agent kinds via emails and writes replies whereas Niles-Hofmann sleeps. Within the morning, she critiques the agent’s work, clicks Ship when the responses are spot-on, and edits people who don’t sound correct. It’s a real collaboration: She and the agent work collectively to handle her e mail, and now she has extra time to strategize with shoppers.
It wasn’t that tough, both. “I constructed an agent,” she mentioned, “and I’m not that sensible.”
The advantages of human-AI collaboration
The World Financial Discussion board predicts that collaboration between people and AI may generate as much as $15.7 trillion in financial worth by 2030 — progress that can come from “amplifying human capabilities.”
“Everyone’s searching for a aggressive edge, for productiveness positive aspects,” mentioned Niles-Hofmann. “That is taking corporations to the subsequent degree of accomplishment to have the ability to do what they may by no means do earlier than.”
Salesforce is an efficient instance. After Voss’s gross sales crew included Agentforce, the Salesforce platform for constructing and deploying brokers, into its workflows, it shortened its gross sales cycle by 36%. The crew closed offers sooner. “We had sooner entry to data on merchandise and had been capable of finding info in minutes — not days — so we may transfer sooner in engagements,” Voss mentioned.
But it surely isn’t simply corporations that profit from human-AI collaboration. Individuals who know find out how to collaborate with AI are extra in demand. PwC’s 2025 International AI Jobs Barometer discovered that jobs requiring AI abilities — which infers the flexibility to collaborate with AI — grew 7.5% over final yr, whereas whole job postings fell by 11.3%. What’s extra, these AI-focused jobs provide a wage premium of 56%, up 25% from final yr.
4 methods to foster this collaboration
Human-AI collaboration doesn’t simply magically occur. Individuals can develop it, and corporations can encourage it, in a number of methods.
1. Mess around with the know-how
One of the simplest ways to find out about, and associate with, AI is to get your arms soiled. Play with the instruments. Ask Google Gemini, for instance, to provide a report, or ask Agentforce to assist with a help request. Contemplate launching an agentic AI pilot to handle one in all your crew’s ache factors.
However for this exploration to work, folks want the grace to fail. “You need to count on and embrace failure, and honor it inside your group,” mentioned Niles-Hofmann. She gave a hypothetical instance of a crew that produces 50 widgets per week. When the crew members begin experimenting with AI, their output drops to 43 widgets. However as they develop more proficient, their output returns to 50, after which exceeds that.
“Experimentation can’t be tied to compensation and advantages,” she mentioned. “You’ll be able to’t count on folks to undergo this huge change and transformation and simply instantly depend on a know-how they’ve by no means encountered earlier than.”
The excellent news is that the extra folks use AI — significantly brokers — the extra doubtless they’ll belief the know-how, in accordance with current Slack analysis.
2. Perceive how AI works — and find out how to work with it
When Niles-Hofmann constructed her agent, she realized how the know-how labored, which helped her higher collaborate with it. It’s a very good lesson: Probably the greatest methods to know AI is by getting underneath the hood.
However Voss, who additionally constructed her personal agent, mentioned that “teaching” it after it’s up and operating is vital, too. In different phrases, you have to frequently assess your AI and make modifications to get the very best efficiency out of the know-how. Ask your self: The place are the directions improper? How can I refine the steering to make it extra priceless? Then, modify as wanted.
Voss instructed carving out time every day to find out about AI. You are able to do this via studying platforms like Salesforce’s Trailhead, but additionally via podcasts, which is how Voss likes to study. Her favorites? The AI Every day Temporary, Lenny’s Podcast, ConTejas Code, and Laborious Fork.
3. Write higher prompts
You already know the drill: You attempt a brand new AI instrument. Its efficiency is … meh. You ditch it. The reality is, AI remains to be evolving. It doesn’t at all times carry out in addition to we’d like.
However you may additionally want to have a look at what you can do higher. For many individuals, which means writing higher prompts. Niles-Hofmann really useful a easy repair. On the finish of every immediate, ask the AI: “Is there something I’m not asking you? Is there one thing I must be telling you? Do you will have any clarifying questions?” This offers the instrument extra info that it must excel.
It additionally helps you perceive your collaborator higher. “Once I’m battling a instrument,” Niles-Hofmann mentioned, “I will not be prompting the AI in the way in which that it’s been skilled.”
Construct an agent by yourself
Be taught the fundamentals of establishing and testing a conversational agent in Agentforce. Get began now on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free on-line studying platform.
4. Use essential considering
To get probably the most out of AI, you have to perceive what it will probably and can’t do. This contains fact-checking what it creates and anticipating hallucinations.
However you additionally want to know AI’s limitations at scale. The Wharton College highlighted this in a current examine, when it requested two teams to generate concepts for a brand new product.
One group was advised to work with OpenAI’s ChatGPT; the opposite relied solely on their very own brains. The outcomes? ChatGPT improved the standard of particular person concepts, however led folks throughout the group to generate related concepts. Solely 6% of the AI-generated concepts had been thought-about distinctive, in comparison with 100% within the human group.
The power to assume critically — to know when to make use of AI and when human abilities work higher — is “in all probability one of many strongest traits you may convey to the human-AI relationship,” Niles-Hofmann mentioned. “You continue to want a human being to have a look at the output, give it some thought, and query it.”
Learn how to measure the success of human-AI collaboration
Niles-Hofmann mentioned the only technique to assess human-AI collaboration is to have a look at AI adoption charges. In spite of everything, folks can solely collaborate with AI in the event that they’re utilizing it.
However she additionally mentioned different metrics for measuring human-AI collaboration are “actually, actually difficult” as a result of the ways in which corporations measure work are altering as AI and brokers grow to be extra prevalent.
Voss agreed. “Productiveness and effectivity have grow to be desk stakes,” she mentioned, including that folks ought to look as an alternative at how AI impacts progress. Her gross sales crew’s win price, for instance, elevated by 11% after it began collaborating with brokers.
Voss additionally seems at worker satisfaction scores, which have elevated, too. “I care extra about how we’re getting higher, as an alternative of simply sooner,” she mentioned.
The true worth of the collaboration, nevertheless, could also be arduous to measure. People and AI working collectively can result in higher decision-making, accelerated innovation, and a aggressive benefit — all issues which can be arduous to quantify.
Collaboration is the important thing to success
With human-AI collaboration, the sum is often higher than its components. As Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff wrote lately, “The true magic is within the partnership: folks and AI working collectively, attaining greater than both may alone.”
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