White-collar jobs are in danger
Till now we have been hearing that AI will impact jobs in the future, but Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleman has said that this future is very close. He has warned in clear words that within the next 12 to 18 months, a large part of the white-collar i.e. intellectual work done in offices can be completely automated.
According to ‘Financial Times’, Mustafa Suleman said that the company is now moving rapidly towards developing “professional-grade AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence). He says that AI is becoming capable of doing the intellectual work that humans do today with their brain and experience.
This statement of Suleman is like an alarm for all those people who spend their day sitting in front of the computer. Be it lawyers who prepare legal documents, accountants who keep accounts, or managers and marketers who handle projects. According to Suleman, most of the routine work in these areas will be done by machines in the next one and a half years. This change is not slowly but is entering our functioning very fast.
Now ‘AI agents’ will handle the work of humans
Till now we saw AI only as an assistant who answered our questions, but Microsoft’s preparations go much further than this. The company is no longer just creating software that works in isolation, but is creating “AI agents”.
These agents will be quite different from any normal software. They will be able to handle complex multi-step workflows independently. For example, whether drafting a contract or analyzing the financial condition of a company, these agents will be able to complete the entire work without human help. Suleman predicts that in the next two to three years, building your own customized AI models will become as easy as writing a blog or starting a podcast today. This means that in the future, the major workflows of institutions will be completely handled by these agents instead of humans.
layoffs are coming
This warning of Suleman is not a mere matter, rather its signs are already visible. Recently, the giant company Salesforce has laid off about 1,000 employees, which is being linked to AI transition and cost cutting. Not only Salesforce, but big companies like Amazon, FedEx and Ericsson have also announced restructuring, the main basis of which is automation and increasing efficiency.
These incidents show that companies have started giving priority to technology instead of human labour. This is not just a glimpse of the future, but a reality that has knocked at our doors.
What is Microsoft’s plan?
Suleman also revealed Microsoft’s future strategy. He indicated that the company is now moving towards “AI self-sufficiency”. This simply means that Microsoft will now reduce its dependence on OpenAI and increase the production of its own AI models.
Suleman said that the company’s new ‘in-house’ models can be launched globally in early 2026. This means that in the coming times, the competition regarding AI in the market is going to become even more intense, which is sure to have a direct impact on the common employees and the nature of their jobs.
