The man leading Microsoft’s AI sprawling efforts is sounding the alarm over imminent mass labor disruptions, warning that the overwhelming majority of white-collar professional work could vanish to automation far sooner than most business and policy leaders are willing to admit - something we've been concerned about since early 2023.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman forecasted that within the next two years a vast swath of desk-bound tasks will be swallowed by AI.
“I think we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks - so white collar where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer, accountant, or project manager, or marketing person - most of the tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months,” Suleyman said when asked about the time table for Artificial general intelligence, commonly known as AGI.
The specter of mass job displacement now haunts governments around the world, even as the true body count remains murky amid broader economic headwinds.
A recent Challenger report showed that AI was blamed for 7,624 job cuts in January, 7% of the month’s total, and linked to 54,836 announced layoffs across 2025. Since tracking started in 2023, AI has been cited in 79,449 planned cuts, roughly 3% of the overall tally.
"It’s difficult to say how big an impact AI is having on layoffs specifically. We know leaders are talking about AI, many companies want to implement it in operations, and the market appears to be rewarding companies that mention it," said Challenger.
A stark illustration is unfolding at Bay Area startup Mercor, which has quietly hired tens of thousands of white-collar contractors, often highly credentialed specialists in medicine, law, finance, engineering, writing, and the arts, to train the very AI systems destined to replace them. Paid $45 to $250 per hour for weeks or months of reviewing and refining model outputs for giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, these workers are, in effect, being paid to hand over the keys to their own obsolescence, the Wall Street Journal reports.
However, some jobs still remain immune from AI - for now. High on the list are occupations that hinge on physical presence and skills such as healthcare professionals and tradesmen such as plumbers and welders. Those are just a sample of jobs that are safe until AI-powered Optimus robots are on the move. Want to know if your job is safe? Click here to see the list.
On the other side of the argument - Morgan Stanley analysts recently warned clients that "AI impacts may take longer to appear in economic data," with the first undeniable waves likely hitting "later this decade and into the next."
"While AI adoption may be faster than past technologies, we think it is still too early to see it in economic data, outside of business investment," Stephen Byrd, the bank's Global Head of Thematic Research and Sustainability Research, toldclients.
Meanwhile, Anthropic is warning that their latest Claude models could be used for "heinous crimes" such as developing chemical weapons.
"In newly-developed evaluations, both Claude Opus 4.5 and 4.6 showed elevated susceptibility to harmful misuse," in certain computer use cases, the company said in a new sabotage report released late Tuesday.
"This included instances of knowingly supporting — in small ways — efforts toward chemical weapon development and other heinous crimes."
Anthropic also noted that in some test environments, when prompted to "single-mindedly optimize a narrow objective," Claude Opus 4.6 appears "more willing to manipulate or deceive other participants, compared to prior models from both Anthropic and other developers."
The company says that the risk is still low but not negligible, however the sudden departure of an Antrhropic AI safety researcher suggests otherwise.
"I continuously find myself reckoning with our situation. The world is in peril. And not just from AI, or bioweapons, but from a whole series of interconnected crises unfolding in this very moment. We appear to be approaching a threshold where our wisdom must grow in equal measure to our capacity to affect the world, lest we face the consequences," said Mrinank Sharma, who led the company's safeguards research team.
Today is my last day at Anthropic. I resigned.
— mrinank (@MrinankSharma) February 9, 2026
Here is the letter I shared with my colleagues, explaining my decision. pic.twitter.com/Qe4QyAFmxL
Last month Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sounded the alarm on AI - warning of the following (via Axios):
- Massive job loss: "I ... simultaneously think that AI will disrupt 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1–2 years."
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