Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman predicts artificial intelligence will reach human-level performance on most professional tasks within 12 to 18 months, threatening white-collar roles including accounting, legal work, marketing, and project management.
Suleyman told the Financial Times that software engineers are already using AI-assisted coding for much of their daily output. The technology itself will be capable of handling most white-collar work before 2027.
However, the gap between technical capability and actual workplace replacement remains significant. Regulations, organizational inertia, and human reluctance to trust machines with complex tasks will slow disruption.
Early signals are visible: nearly 50,000 job cuts this year have been tied to AI, according to tracking data. Microsoft itself has laid off around 15,000 workers recently.
Suleyman isn't alone in this forecast. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Ford CEO Jim Farley have made similar predictions about AI-driven job displacement. Studies estimate roughly 11.7% of US workers could be replaced by AI under certain conditions.