"Within 18 months": Microsoft announces that AI will replace these jobs.

During a recent interview granted to the Financial Times, Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft's AI division, did not mince words. According to him, AI solutions will master the majority of intellectual tasks within 18 months.

Lawyers, accountants, project managers, or marketing specialists risk seeing their daily routines radically changed. Who would have thought such a revolution would strike so quickly?

The leader is indeed very clear about this tight schedule: « Most of these tasks will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months », he asserts, directly targeting professionals sitting behind a screen.

Software developers on the front lines

This metamorphosis is far from science fiction. Software engineering is already experiencing this seismic shift internally. An increasing number of developers are relying heavily on AI to generate their code, effectively transforming their role towards more analysis and system architecture.

« Today [...] we have models that can code better than the majority of coders, or even all of them so far », assures Mustafa Suleyman in the columns of the British daily. A shared observation at the highest level of the company: as noted by BFMTV, Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) recently stated that 20 to 30% of internal code is already written by machines. A figure that could even rise to 95% by 2030. The secret to this rapid progress would come from the multiplication of computing power.

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"Over the past 15 years, the computing power used for model training has been multiplied by a thousand billion. In the next three years, it will be multiplied by another thousand," claims the leader of the Redmond-based company.

Should we expect mass unemployment as a result ? The context is chilling. In 2025, Microsoft has already laid off nearly 15,000 people (including 10% of Microsoft France employees), while actively deploying its own automation tools internally.

Microsoft frees itself from OpenAI to create custom solutions

To support this vision, the Redmond-based company wants to fly on its own wings. End of total dependence on OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT). The American giant is now aiming for « true self-sufficiency » by developing its own large foundational models, driven by infrastructure spending estimated at $140 billion for the current year.

Microsoft aims for an AI so easy to model that « creating a new model will be as simple as creating a podcast or writing a blog ». To reassure against this technological omnipotence, the company advocates for a « humanistic superintelligence », intended to serve humanity, particularly to relieve hospitals in crisis. The question remains whether this beautiful promise will be enough to calm the legitimate anxieties of workers.

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