Summary:
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AI assistants like AgentForce are reshaping workdays, providing a capability upgrade and improving productivity.
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Concerns about AI hallucinations in business are addressed, with Slack focusing on long-term memory and respect for privacy.
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Slack’s goal is to make AI disappear seamlessly into work processes, empowering individuals to become great orchestrators in the workplace.
What if your next teammate wasn’t human, but still knew your company inside out?
On the latest episode of The AI Download sponsored by PRophet, host Shira Lazar sits down with Ryan Gavin, Chief Marketing Officer at Slack, to unpack how digital agents like Salesforce’s AgentForce are reshaping our workdays.
“This is really about giving people a capability upgrade,” Gavin explains, describing how invisible AI assistants are moving from headline hype to hands-on productivity.
“Work is going to change more in the next five years than it has in the last 20 years,” Gavin says. “Undoubtedly, jobs are going to change.”
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A genuine concern when it comes to AI, especially in a business, is AI hallucinations.
A recent NPR story highlighted two MyPillow attorneys who were fined for filing bogus legal citations generated by AI. Gavin doesn’t shy away from the concern: “Anytime we use AI in Slack, we surface the citation for where the model got that context from,” he says. “You can verify it directly.”
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Lazar and Gavin also dive into regulatory shifts like the EU’s AI Code of Practice, requiring companies to disclose training data and manage systemic risks. While Gavin supports more openness, he stresses that Slack is already there: “We’re never going to train an LLM on your data,” he says. “The idea of your data going outside of the walls of your company just never becomes an issue.”
Instead, AI inside Slack is focused on “long-term memory.” With access to years of conversations (with permission settings intact), agents can bring unprecedented depth to collaboration. “They get to tap into the long-term memory of your company,” Gavin says. “It gives agents depth and context and reasoning and insight that you wouldn’t get just from that structured data.”
A recent internal study revealed that daily AI use on Slack surged by 233 percent, with 81 percent of users reporting higher job satisfaction.
What happens when these agents live inside your workspace? Can they see your private Slack DMs?
Nope. According to Gavin, agents inherit existing Slack channel permissions. “Private messages stay private unless you choose to share,” he assures.
Slack’s goal isn’t to spotlight AI—it’s to make it disappear. “We have this principle called ‘don’t make me think,’” Gavin says. Whether it’s AI-powered search across your entire enterprise or profile summaries that show what a colleague is working on, it’s all baked into the flow of work.
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“You’re going to move to orchestrating work as an individual,” he explains. “And people who learn how to be great orchestrators… will scale their capacity beyond what’s imaginable today.”
Gavin’s advice to anyone nervous about AI? “Be curious. Start to play with these tools and capabilities… You’ve already got yourself like 80 percent of the way there.”
