Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made a major contribution to healthcare in Hawaii. In 2024, Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne announced a $150 million donation to two Hawaii hospitals, described as the largest healthcare donation in the state’s history, to improve access to care and address infrastructure needs. Now, as AI companies build increasingly powerful systems, Benioff is pointing to another Hawaiian idea: kuleana, a concept linked to personal responsibility. During Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, he said AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic must take responsibility for the risks created by their technology before people are harmed.
Marc Benioff says AI companies must take responsibility
Marc Benioff told Fortune that companies should be held responsible for the risks created by their products and technology. “We know we have to hold companies responsible for their products and their technology before people are hurt,” he said.He connected this approach to kuleana, a Hawaiian concept of personal responsibility that he said is important for corporate ethics. Benioff said companies developing AI need to think about possible harm before problems happen, rather than explaining what went wrong after an incident.
Salesforce CEO points to Hawaiian concept of kuleana
Marc Benioff said AI companies are in a position to understand what is happening inside their own laboratories and therefore have a responsibility to act. “Only [tech] companies know what’s going on in their lab,” he said. “At some deep level, these companies must hold themselves responsible for their safety.”He did not offer a specific plan for regulating AI companies and declined to say whether governments should regulate the industry. Instead, he pointed to product liability laws as one possible legal route for holding companies accountable when their technology causes harm.Benioff’s comments came during Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, where AI safety was a major topic. Earlier in the day, Benioff interviewed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Altman described a July incident involving Hugging Face and autonomous AI agents as a warning and said companies should ensure safety stays ahead of AI capabilities.Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also appeared during Benioff’s keynote and supported pacing the development of frontier AI models. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang offered a different view, saying speed and safety can exist at the same time.
Marc Benioff previously donated $150 million to Hawaii healthcare
Marc Benioff’s focus on responsibility also extends to his connection with Hawaii. In 2024, Marc and Lynne Benioff announced a $150 million donation to two Hawaii hospitals to improve healthcare access and address infrastructure needs. The donation was described as the largest healthcare donation in Hawaii’s history. Benioff now lives in Hawaii.