Microsoft’s AI chief predicts most white-collar tasks could be automated within 18 months

Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said artificial intelligence will reach human-level performance on most professional tasks within 12 to 18 months, putting office roles from accounting to project management at risk of rapid automation. The prediction revives a string of dire forecasts from tech leaders even as real-world effects remain uneven: studies show only modest productivity gains in legal and accounting work, and one nonprofit found AI tools slowed software developers by 20%. While Big Tech profit margins have expanded, broader corporate earnings have seen little AI lift, and stocks in software swooned earlier this year on fears of agentic systems supplanting SaaS functions. Challenger, Gray & Christmas tallied roughly 49,000 AI-related job cuts in 2026 to date, suggesting displacement is starting but far from universal. Suleyman, who is pushing Microsoft to build its own frontier models and reduce reliance on OpenAI, maintains the technology’s momentum won’t stall, even as rivals like Anthropic press their enterprise advantage and skepticism about near-term payoffs grows.

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