Microsoft AI chief walks back comments about AI taking over white-collar work

Microsoft AI head Mustafa Suleyman is walking back his statement about AI automating jobs done by white-collar workers, including lawyers, accountants, and project managers. During an episode of Decoder on Monday, Suleyman says he meant AI will help these workers complete tasks, rather than do their jobs:

Microsoft AI chief walks back comments about AI taking over white-collar work

Mustafa Suleyman says AI will help these workers complete tasks, rather than do their jobs.

Mustafa Suleyman says AI will help these workers complete tasks, rather than do their jobs.

Sending an email, having a conversation with a colleague, putting together a PowerPoint — sub-tasks will increasingly become digitized, automated, and we can basically generate more and more of them. That does not necessarily mean that the role goes away at all. It just means that the work can be done faster and more efficiently, which is today often work that is quite rote, is quite manual, is quite labor-intensive, and is time-consuming. And so the natural progression of technology is to make your life easier, faster, less friction for more seamlessness.

The Financial Times included Suleyman’s original statement in a February report, where he said “white-collar work, where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

When asked about this quote on Decoder, Suleyman argues that there’s “a very important distinction” between tasks and jobs. “I said ‘tasks’ in the quote that you’ve just said,” Suleyman says. “So that does not mean jobs… Jobs and roles are the broader category, and tasks are the components of that.”