AI chief warns most white-collar jobs face automation soon

https://www.communicationstoday.co.in/ai-chief-warns-most-white-collar-jobs-face-automation-soon/

Publish Date: 2026-05-19 05:00:00

Source Domain: www.communicationstoday.co.in

Microsoft AI chief executive Mustafa Suleyman has warned that artificial intelligence will automate a vast majority of white-collar work within 12 to 18 months

Suleyman singled out lawyers, accountants, project managers, and marketing professionals as being uniquely “at risk,” given their heavy dependence on computer-based tasks.

He added that advanced AI agents could soon coordinate complex business tasks under minimal human supervision, and predicted that building custom AI models would eventually be as straightforward as launching a podcast or publishing a blog.

Software engineers are already using AI-assisted coding tools to generate large portions of their daily output, Suleyman noted.

The comments come as agentic AI — systems that can independently handle tasks such as coding, scheduling, research, and customer support — has emerged as the dominant focus for major technology companies including Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk, meanwhile, has said artificial general intelligence could arrive as early as this year.

Suleyman is far from alone. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei has warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push US unemployment to between 10% and 20% within the next one to five years.

Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist widely known as the “godfather of AI,” has separately warned that AI will have the capabilities to replace many jobs in 2026, with white-collar roles increasingly in its crosshairs.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has also projected that mid-level programmers could become redundant in the coming years. Data from consultancy firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows AI was cited as the reason for nearly 55,000 US layoffs in 2025. NDTV Profit

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