Sales, Admin, And Tech Jobs Most At Risk from AI, Microsoft Says

Microsoft Research conducted a new study which warns how Copilot, alongside other generative AI tools, will impact jobs in fields such as sales roles, software development work, and office administration positions.

The study, based on 200,000 real-world user-AI conversations, found that the most common tasks AI assists with include gathering information, writing, and teaching, which are all activities central to many white-collar jobs.

The research demonstrates that AI most strongly affects the employment sectors of Sales, Computer and Mathematical, Office and Administrative Support, Education, Legal, and Media and Communication.

These are jobs where much of the work revolves around processing, creating, or communicating information, something AI does increasingly well.

“Information gathering and writing activities receive the most positive thumbs feedback and are the most successfully completed tasks,” the study noted. It added that AI often acts as a “coach, advisor, or teacher that gathers information and explains it to the user.”

While AI hasn’t yet fully automated any single job, the overlap between AI’s abilities and job tasks is growing. “There are definitely some occupations for which many—perhaps even most—work activities have some overlap with demonstrated AI capabilities,” the researchers found.

Still, the authors caution against assuming these jobs will immediately disappear. “It is tempting to conclude that occupations that have high overlap with activities AI performs will be automated […] This would be a mistake,” they write, citing past examples like ATMs, which shifted job roles rather than eliminating them entirely.

The study indicates that knowledge-based and communication-heavy roles will experience the most immediate disruption, while manual labor and physical jobs remain relatively unaffected.

The ability of AI to perform tasks determines which jobs will be at risk, thus requiring workers, educators, and policymakers to understand this relationship.