Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI has made a bold prediction saying that many white-collar jobs could be automated within the next 12 to 18 months as artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more capable, reports Financial Times. Suleyman said rapid advances in AI could change how professional work is done across sectors such as law, accounting, marketing, and project management. The remarks add to growing debate among technology leaders about AI’s impact on employment and enterprise workflows. Recently, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed that software engineering as a profession will become obsolete in 12 months.
Microsoft AI CEO on white-collar work and AI automation
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said the company is developing what he described as “professional grade AGI,” referring to AI systems designed to handle everyday tasks performed by knowledge workers. He said many office-based roles that involve working on computers could see a large share of their tasks automated within the next 12 to 18 months. He further added that AI agents are expected to improve their ability to coordinate across large organisations over the next two to three years, learning from experience and taking more autonomous actions.
Microsoft’s push for AI self-sufficiency
As per the report, Suleyman said Microsoft is pursuing “true self-sufficiency” in AI following a restructuring of its relationship with OpenAI last year. While Microsoft retains access to OpenAI’s advanced models, it is now building its own foundation models using large-scale computing infrastructure and internal AI teams. The company plans to launch its in-house models later this year and is increasing investment in data, chips, and data centres to support long-term AI development.
Anthropic CEO says software engineering will become obsolete
Speaking at World Economic Forum 2026 last month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that software engineering will become outdated in the next 12 months. Amodei argues that the “pace of progress” is the defining factor that makes AI more dangerous to the workforce than the fact that it will lead to some job cuts. To support his claim, he pointed out that in just two years, AI has evolved from struggling with a single line of code to writing entire programs for engineers at his own firm.“The pace of progress in AI is much faster than for previous technological revolutions. For example, in the last 2 years, AI models went from barely being able to complete a single line of code, to writing all or almost all of the code for some people—including engineers at Anthropic.37 Soon, they may do the entire task of a software engineer end to end,” Amodei wrote in a 20,000-word essay last month.
