Microsoft’s AI chief: Office jobs will disappear in 18 months

In an interview with the Financial Times, Suleyman described a scenario in which “computer” jobs will become primarily a terrain for automation, from legal and accounting tasks to marketing and project management. In the same context, he mentioned that the industry is on the threshold of ‘human level’ performance in most professional tasks, and that models will appear in the short term that will adapt to individuals and organizations.

It is important to emphasize that this is a forecast, not an official announcement by Microsoft that it will “shut down” jobs within that period. Even when AI can do something well enough, companies must address accountability, accuracy, data security, internal procedures and regulation, and this often slows mass adoption. This is precisely why some analysts and experts warn that the speed of adoption in real companies cannot be equated with the speed of progress of the model.

However, such statements are not isolated. Similar warnings in recent months have come from other people at the top of the AI ​​industry, with claims that entry-level and ‘junior’ office jobs, i.e. tasks that are standardized and repetitive, could suffer the most. At the same time, some research and business analysis suggests that the measurable impact of generative AI in large organizations is uneven for now, from great savings in individual teams to situations where it is used more ‘for testing’ than for real process transformation.

For Microsoft, this topic is particularly sensitive because the entire strategy in business software increasingly revolves around Copilot and AI functions in Office, Windows and the cloud. When such an assessment is uttered by the person who leads Microsoft AI, many interpret it as a message to the market: ‘this is the pace at which we are planning’.