‘Most office jobs will be automated’: Microsoft AI CEO warns white-collar workers
‘Most office jobs will be automated’: Microsoft AI CEO warns white-collar workers
Publish Date: 2026-05-18 00:31:00
Source Domain: www.peoplematters.in
Mustafa Suleyman, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft AI, has warned that artificial intelligence could soon automate a large share of white-collar work, including jobs in law, accounting, marketing and project management.
Speaking earlier this year in a conversation with the Financial Times, Suleyman said AI systems were approaching “human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks”.
According to Fortune, Suleyman predicted that most work involving “sitting down at a computer” could be fully automated within the next year to 18 months.
The comments add to a growing wave of warnings from technology executives and AI researchers about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on office-based professions.
Lawyers, marketers and coders among roles flagged
Suleyman identified several professional sectors that he believes are particularly exposed to AI-driven automation.
These include:
- Accounting
- Legal services
- Marketing
- Project management
- Software coding and development
The Microsoft AI executive linked the shift to the rapid growth in computational power, arguing that increasingly advanced AI models would eventually outperform many human workers in technical and analytical tasks.
“As compute advances,” Suleyman said, AI models would become capable of coding better than most human programmers.
His comments were echoed in a recent essay by AI researcher Matt Shumer, published in part by Fortune, which compared the current AI moment to the period immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic reshaped economies and workplaces globally.
Tech leaders revive warnings over AI job losses
Suleyman’s remarks come amid renewed debate over whether generative AI will fundamentally alter the structure of professional employment.
Several major technology executives have issued similar warnings over the past two years.
Among the predictions cited by Fortune:
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei previously warned AI could eliminate half of…
