Sales software giant Salesforce is making this bold prediction based on the idea that agent AI tools will take over enough job functions now done by humans, and has carried out a study of HR workers that supports this idea. As AI agents are adopted, Salesforce notes, companies will see efficiency boosts, and it pins this boost as an average productivity gain and drop in labor costs equivalent to saving over $11,000 per worker.

Among the skills they’re concentrating on, most leaders agree that soft skills—like interpersonal work in relationship building and collaboration—are going to become more important.

Some of these assignments will be to more technical roles, like “data scientists or technical architects” in the near term, presumably because AI agents will have taken over enough of the basic behind-the-scenes work in the office, freeing up workers for more intellectual tasks. This task shift will also see finance teams, customer service teams, and operations teams shrink in size.