Salesforce looks to the future with Einstein artificial intelligence

Salesforce has a history of staying close to the cutting edge of technology, so it shouldn't be surprising that it announced an artificial intelligence initiative recently, it dubbed Einstein. We caught up with some key members of the Einstein team at Dreamforce earlier this month and asked them to explain the new technology for us. Einstein isn't a product so much as a set of intelligence functionality that underlies the entire Salesforce platform, and while the types of functionality that it's enabling now are somewhat limited, the idea is to provide a base on top of which the company can continue to add new capabilities into the future. Today, Einstein can provide information like predictive lead scoring and opportunity insights, which alert a rep how a deal is trending -- the kinds of information many CRM applications have been offering for some time -- but as the technology develops, the company sees a much bigger role for it. As John Ball, GM of Einstein at Salesforce explains, it's really aimed at making life easier for users.