Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman warned white-collar jobs could be automated within 12 to 18 months as AI reaches human-level performance, says company is building professional-grade AGI and expanding in-house models amid growing industry race and workforce disruption concerns.
Amid the accelerating rise of artificial intelligence, Microsoft CEO Mustafa Suleyman has issued a stark warning, saying many white-collar jobs could disappear within the next 12 to 18 months as AI systems become more capable, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Suleyman also remarked that rapid advancement in AI could change the professional tradition across different sectors such as law, accounting, marketing and engineering.
Recently Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed that software engineering will become obsolete in 12 months.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said the company is developing what he described as “professional grade AGI,” referring to AI systems designed to handle everyday tasks performed by knowledge workers.
“I think that we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks,” Suleyman said in the interview that was published Wednesday. “So white-collar work, where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”
Business Insider recently reported that ‘AI fatigue’ has hit software engineering: the technology has unlocked productivity but also exhaustion, as workers are expected to take on more work at once.
As per the report, Suleyman said Microsoft is pursuing “true self-sufficiency” in AI following a restructuring of its relationship with OpenAI last year.
While Microsoft retains access to OpenAI’s advanced models, it is now building its own foundation models using large-scale computing infrastructure and internal AI teams. The company plans to launch its in-house models later this year and is increasing investment in data, chips, and data centres to support long-term AI development.
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