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Microsoft AI CEO: 'Most, if not all' white-collar tasks can be replaced by AI within 12-18 months
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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This will be unpopular, but he's almost right. Most white collar jobs could be automated to the point where minimal human oversight is needed, with technology we've had for a decade. It hasn't happened because developing that software has been prohibitively expensive.
What has changed is the cost of developing software for the "last mile" (logistics parlance) is dropping like a stone thanks to AI. This isn't entirely about AI doing your job, but AI analyzing your job and finally using normal procedural tech to automate it. Your role may be reduced to supervision.
For jobs that need actual cognitive power, the quasi-reasoning capability of LLMs will likely supplement your work, if it's not already. It's unlikely that high stakes reasoning will ever be 100% automated, but surely that's a judgement of the responsible party or more likely the irresponsible party.
This will create social upheaval and psychological torment for many. The obvious economic disaster of massive unemployment of educated people who are used to doing highly organized functions is making some people wring their hands. Certainly there should be a plan, but capital insists a race to the bottom immediately or risk being obsolete and worthless. First movers may cash out before everyone else loses their shirt.
I won't get into tit for tat internet debates anymore. Everything is conjecture here, we're trying to forecast the future. That said, I was a BIG SKEPTIC until a couple of months ago. Tech changes quickly. Whatever your opinion of Ai, or any advanced tech, re evaluate it every 6 months. I manage data science projects for a living, if that's worth anything. There's way too hype, but I caution against opposite but equal hubris.
You're allowed to think whatever you want to think, but your belief without references is not convincing. And the counterpoint, which is my opinion, which is also just an opinion, is that AI salespeople can convince your boss that AI can replace you, but in reality it can't. But even if it could, what we actually find is that what typically happens is that other tangential jobs increase in number as technology rolls out. When cars hit the scene, we all of a sudden had a lot of people paving roads and doing oil changes and working at garages and stuff like that. All of which didn't exist to any scale before the automobile.
But I think you're right that AI could easily replace CEOs and all variety of company upper-level management because many of those people are just blindly gambling or accepting bribes or quid pro quo deals with their friends.
It really isn't.
There's tons of proof-of-concept for all-in AI adoption, and it's all horror stories, unless it's ad copy. Those going all-in are getting hacked while alienating their customers.
AI made it so that more people can achieve the role of "shitty developer".
Shitty developers cost organizations an average of 4x their annual salary in medium term easily measured financial damage. Long term damage numbers are higher, but impossible to measure.
AI also makes real developers feel more productive while actually making them about 20% less productive.
The real thing driving down the cost of developers is that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Netflix and Disney know that plenty of us are too lazy to shop somewhere else, even when their shit stops working correctly - so they don't have to pay competent DevOps staff, anymore.
You're not wrong that a lot of jobs end up being a lot of "busy work", but at the same time software and Ai don't exactly fill the gap as they stand today.
The issue with hardware is not only the cost to develop, but also it's fragility and inflexibility. Things can change fast in the real world and people are used to fill in the gaps.
While Ai could make software faster, it just isn't really there yet. When using Ai tools I consistently find that I'm consistently needing to lean on my experience on my field to get any significant value out of Ai, and many times it tries to lead me down dead ends.
All of that isn't even touching on the "meatspace" element of many jobs that Ai can not deal with at all.