One of the biggest concerns surrounding the rapid development of AI is how it'll affect the job market, with experts predicting that countless roles will be made redundant following advancements in the new technology.
It's certainly not a new concept either, as looking back in history we can see numerous instances of new technologies eliminating forms of work, with the most significant recent example being the invention of the computer and internet.
Artificial intelligence looks to be next in line when it comes to forcing redundancies, although some speculate that it could have a greater impact than ever before, eradicating all but a handful of jobs in the next years and decades.
One individual that firmly holds this belief is Microsoft's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, as he has recently made a bold prediction regarding the jobs most likely to be replaced by AI in the next 18 months.
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Speaking to the Financial Times, Suleyman outlined: "I think we're going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all professional tasks. So white-colalr 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 these tasks will be fully automated by AI within the next 12 to 18 months."
This shouldn't exactly be a surprise to hear for anyone that has been keeping up with AI developments across the last few years, but it does still strike fear in the millions that would be affected in the United States alone.
Something that some have rightfully pointed out is that we've been hearing these kinds of death knell statements for white collar jobs for a while now, yet many still remain in place — albeit augmented by AI in a lot of cases.
One consideration that'll have to be taken into account before widespread job eliminations take place is how people survive if there are no more jobs to go into, as while some have floated utopian worlds where people no longer need to work and are supported by universal high income streams, that money has to come from somewhere and the actions of the current government don't indicate that they'd be willing to provide it.
Profits are often the only thing to consider for many of these big companies and employers though, and we've already heard about plans from people like Mark Zuckerberg to replace the vast majority of coding staff with AI agents, so only time will tell quite how impactful AI will prove to be in the job market.