Microsoft AI Chief Warns White-Collar Jobs May Vanish Within a Year

On Thursday, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said that within the next 12 to 18 months, Artificial Intelligence (AI) could take over most tasks done in office jobs.

He said in an interview that jobs such as lawyers, accountants, and project managers, which mainly involve working on a computer, may soon be handled entirely by AI instead of humans.

He said that in software engineering, most developers are now using AI to help write most of their code. Because of this, their job has changed.

Instead of spending most of their time writing code line by line, engineers now focus more on strategic plans, such as architecting and putting things into production. According to him, this change in their role has happened very quickly, within just the last six months.

He further said that today there are AI models that can code better than the large majority of human coders, “maybe even all of them to date.”

Suleyman said that in the future, making a new AI model will be as easy as starting a podcast or writing a blog. Schools, companies, and other organisations will be able to create their own AI tools that fit their specific needs.

He also said that within the next two to three years, AI agents will be able to manage and carry out many tasks and processes for large organisations.

Microsoft’s AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, said his main goal is to build extremely powerful artificial intelligence, something far more advanced than the AI tools people use today.

A few months ago, Microsoft renewed and extended its long-term partnership with OpenAI until 2032. He said, “We also decided this was the moment we have to set about delivering true AI self-sufficiency.”

He further talked about building its own AI foundation models, which will have strong internal teams to train these models and manage large amounts of data efficiently.

These comments come at a time when there are growing concerns that AI could replace many human jobs. Earlier, Amazon shared in a blog post that it was cutting up to 16,000 corporate jobs. The company said this decision was partly due to growing competition in artificial intelligence (AI).

Last year, Microsoft also shared news in a blog post about its partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft said it signed a new agreement that strengthens its relationship with OpenAI.

In this agreement, both OpenAI and Microsoft agreed to keep working closely together. OpenAI will continue to build its most advanced AI models with Microsoft as its main partner. Microsoft will also keep special rights to use OpenAI’s technology.

Microsoft and OpenAI have been working together since 2019 to improve and expand artificial intelligence technologies.