Microsoft AI Chief Mustafa Suleyman Says Most Professional Tasks Will Be Fully Automated By AI Within 12-18 Months

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.”

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.”

Don’t Miss:

Suleyman, the British AI entrepreneur leading the specialized division focused on advancing consumer AI products and research within Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), explained that engineers’ roles have shifted to a more strategic focus, including debugging, careful analysis, and designing system architecture.

He said this same pattern will apply to white-collar work, “where you’re sitting down at a computer” across professions.

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.”

Trending: Blue-chip art has historically outpaced the S&P 500 since 1995, and fractional investing is now opening this institutional asset class to everyday investors.

Models today “can code better than the vast majority of human coders, maybe even all of them to date,” Suleyman added.

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.”

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.