Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, made a bold prediction about the future of professional tasks, suggesting that "most, if not all, professional tasks" for lawyers, accountants, project managers, and marketing professionals "will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months."
Software Engineers Already Experiencing Role Transformation
In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Suleyman pointed to software engineering as evidence that the shift is already underway.
"Many software engineers report that they are now using AI-assisted coding for the vast majority of their code production," he said, noting this transformation happened "in the last six months."
Suleyman, the British AI entrepreneur leading the specialized division focused on advancing consumer AI products and research within Microsoft Corp.
He said this same pattern will apply to white-collar work, "where you're sitting down at a computer" across professions.
Unprecedented Compute Increases Behind AI Capabilities
Earlier in the interview, Suleyman discussed the broader context.
"Over the last 15 years, there's been a 1 trillionfold increase in training compute," he stated. "In the next 3 years or so, there will be a further 1,000x increase in training compute."
Models today "can code better than the vast majority of human coders, maybe even all of them to date," Suleyman added.
Defining AGI Versus Superintelligence
When asked about the difference between artificial general intelligence and superintelligence, Suleyman explained that he focuses on building a system capable of performing most tasks that a typical professional handles daily, referring to this as "professional-grade AGI."
Microsoft Faces Pressure As AI Race Intensifies
Suleyman's prediction aligns with the recent comments made by Dario Amodei, CEO of the California-based AI company Anthropic, who suggested that AI models could soon take over most, if not all, tasks currently performed by software engineers. He estimated the shift to happen within the next six to twelve months.
However, Suleyman's prediction comes at a time when Microsoft is reportedly falling behind in the AI race, despite its OpenAI partnership, as rivals ramp up infrastructure spending.
He has previously emphasized the importance of developing AI to serve people rather than to act as a person, cautioning about the risks of systems that could convincingly mimic consciousness without truly having it.
