- Microsoft AI chief says white-collar jobs could be at risk from AI
- A big change could come in the next 12-18 months
- Mustafa Suleyman is the latest in a line of tech CEOs to sound the alarm about the job impact
Microsoft’s AI chief has stated that he believes AI is set to go so far as to replace white-collar job roles within the next 12-18 months.
Speaking in a YouTube interview with Financial TimesMustafa Suleyman addressed the company’s push toward “artificial capable intelligence,” a term he coined for the next step toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
“I think we want human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks,” Suleyman said. “So, white-collar work where you’re sitting at a computer—either you’re, you know, a lawyer or an accountant, or a project manager or a marketer—most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI in the next 12 to 18 months.”
AI job risk
Suleyman also outlined his belief that AI tools will be useful for almost every field as Microsoft looks more towards “humanistic superintelligence”.
“There will be billions of digital brains,” he said. “There will be many, many different models. Creating a new model is like creating a podcast or writing a blog – it becomes possible to design an AI that fits your requirements for every institution, organization and person on the planet.”
Suleyman’s opinions have been echoed by many other tech leaders in recent months, reflecting a broader shift in the industry as AI becomes more commonplace in workplaces around the world.
In May 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also warned the US government about the risk AI poses to white-collar jobs, predicting that up to half of all entry-level roles could be filled by AI, leading to unemployment of as much as 20% in the next one to five years.
“It sounds crazy and people just don’t believe it,” Amodei said, noting how AI has the potential to impact society in positive and negative ways; “Cancer is cured, the economy is growing at 10% a year, the budget is balanced – and 20% of people don’t have a job.”
“We, as producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what’s coming.”
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