For the second half of the 20th century (what Fortune Founder Henry Luce called it “the American Century”), MBA and law programs were a ticket to a great office job and a path to the American dream. The 21st century asks: what will happen when all these office jobs are automated?
In a recent conversation with the Financial Timesthe CEO of Microsoft AI leader Mustafa Suleyman has delivered another in a series of predictions from AI leaders that white-collar work is on the brink of radical transformation thanks to AI. His deadline is 18 months until law school and MBA graduates – along with many less qualified peers – are out of luck.
Suleyman predicted that “human-level performance on most, if not all, job tasks” would be achieved by AI. Most tasks that involve “sitting at a computer” will be fully automated by AI within a year or 18 months, he said, calling accounting, legal, marketing and even project management vulnerable. Suleyman’s warning echoed the week’s viral essay, one version of which was published on Fortune.comby AI researcher Matt Shumer, who compared this moment to February 2020, when the pandemic was about to hit America. It will be more dramatic, though, Shumer said.
Suleyman cited the exponential growth in computing power as a flashing red signal that AI could replace large swathes of professionals. As “computing” advances, he said, models will be able to code better than most human coders. Shumer and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have both recently written about their concern, even sadness, that their life’s work is quickly becoming obsolete.
If Suleyman’s warning sounds familiar, that’s because it was early 2025, when many CEOs issued similar doomsday prophecies. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic warned last May, AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Jim Farley, CEO of Ford said AI would cut the number of white-collar jobs in the United States by half
In The AtlanticJosh Tyrangiel argued that the United States was unprepared for the coming AI disruption, likening CEOs’ recent silence on the subject to seeing “a shark’s fin breaking the water.”
But this drumbeat begins again, with EspaceX CEO Elon Musk said last month in Davos that he believes artificial general intelligence – AI that matches or exceeds human intelligence – could arrive as soon as this year.
The current reality of AI and white-collar work
However, as AI experts speculate about when and if AI will disrupt white-collar work, the technology has so far made little noise in professional services. A 2025 Thomson Reuters report find lawyers, accountants and auditors are experimenting with AI for targeted tasks such as document review and routine analysis. But even if the results showed marginal improvements in productivity, they were not enough to signal massive job losses.
In fact, in some cases, AI has had the opposite effect: making workers less productive. A recent study The nonprofit Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) study on the impact of AI on software developers found that the technology actually made workers’ tasks 20% longer.
The benefits the economy is seeing are largely limited to the tech industry, suggesting that AI’s disruption has been limited in the real economy. Recent research Since Apollo Global Management Chief economist Torsten Slok found that while big tech’s profit margins increased by more than 20% in the fourth quarter of 2025, the broader Bloomberg 500 index saw virtually no change. A a few days earlierSlok had noted that “investors do not believe AI will lead to higher profits outside of the technology sector,” citing Wall Street consensus expectations for the S&P 500.
Yet there are early signs that AI is leading to job losses. About 55,000 job losses in 2025 were AI-related, according to employment consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Without citing AI as a reason for job cuts, Microsoft laid off 15,000 workers last year. In a note released last July following job cuts, CEO Satya Nadella said the company needed to “reimagine our mission for a new era.”
Despite marginal reductions in labor, markets are reacting violently to the technology’s potential. Last week, software stocks suffered a massive sell-off due to automation fears (analysts dubbed it the “SaaSpocalypse“, for the software as a service sector). The sale came after Anthropic and OpenAI. announcement launching agentic AI systems for businesses that perform many of the key functions of SaaS organizations.
Suleyman’s vision for Microsoft
Suleyman is adamant about the potential of this technology. He believes that organizations will be able to adapt technology to perform any required function, thereby improving productivity in white-collar sectors. “Creating a new model will be like creating a podcast or writing a blog,” he said. “It will be possible to design AI tailored to your needs for every institution, organization and person on the planet.”
Suleyman said his main mission as Microsoft’s head of AI is to achieve “superintelligence.” The CEO wants to achieve AI self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on OpenAI, instead prioritizing building company-agnostic models.
“After all, it is the most important technology of our time,” Suleyman said. “We need to develop our own foundation models that are at the absolute frontier.”