{"id":46977,"date":"2026-03-02T17:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T01:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=46977"},"modified":"2026-03-02T17:39:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T01:39:01","slug":"blocks-massive-cuts-stoke-fears-about-ais-effects-on-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/02\/blocks-massive-cuts-stoke-fears-about-ais-effects-on-employment\/","title":{"rendered":"Block\u2019s massive cuts stoke fears about AI\u2019s effects on employment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/users\/profile\/Troy_Wolverton\">By Troy Wolverton | Examiner staff writer<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Feb 27, 2026 (SFExaminer.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/sfexaminer.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/9\/c5\/9c595660-4be1-42d7-90b0-c6f9eb3527c6\/628e6d9db5017.image.jpg?resize=400%2C267\" alt=\"A year of scandals forced a shift in values for the tech industry (copy)\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In a post on social-media site X, Block CEO Jack Dorsey \u2014 seen in 2021 \u2014 attributed layoffs announced this week to the company\u2019s adoption and use of artificial-intelligence tools.Alfonso Duran \u00a9 2021 The New York Times Company<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In announcing mass layoffs this week, Block seemingly validated a fear many people have been facing lately \u2014 that artificial intelligence is going to replace human workers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Oakland-based financial-services company said&nbsp;Thursday it plans to cut more than 40% of its 10,000-plus workers. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Jack Dorsey pointed directly at AI as the reason for the cuts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>AI-powered tools are increasingly useful, Dorsey said. Using those tools, he said, smaller teams of employees than in the past can do better and more productive work \u2014 and over the coming year, a \u201cmajority of companies\u201d are likely to make the same discovery and follow Blox\u2019s lead.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re early to this realization,\u201d Dorsey said. \u201cI think most companies are late.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At least since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022 and demonstrated the power of generative AI systems,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/technology\/decagon-ceo-jesse-zhang-bets-ai-replaces-customer-support\/article_c8b46fec-eb3a-4f6c-b638-fa1044572a92.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">tech CEOs<\/a>, social commentators, politicians and others have been predicting that mass adoption of the technology will lead to massive job losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To date, though, the evidence has been mixed at best. Unemployment is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasdaq.com\/articles\/recent-college-grads-are-discovering-stem-degree-doesnt-guarantee-stable-job\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">up among recent college graduates<\/a>&nbsp;\u2014&nbsp;particularly those who studied computer science, a trend some analysts&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfordeconomics.com\/resource\/educated-but-unemployed-a-rising-reality-for-us-college-grads\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">have attributed to AI displacing entry-level workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While companies have been linking job cuts they were making to to AI, the standard line for many \u2014 including companies such as Pinterest and Amazon \u2014 was that they were&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/technology\/amazons-massive-layoffs-hitting-more-than-100-in-sf\/article_cc0d836d-c78c-49b1-926f-c72ba5c2333f.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cutting staff to invest in AI<\/a>, not using the technology to replace workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the few companies that explicitly said it was replacing workers with AI \u2014 online banking company Klarna, which took aim at its customer-service staff \u2014&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/business\/klarna-ceo-sebastian-siemiatkowski-ai-job-cuts-hiring-b2755580.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">quickly walked that back<\/a>&nbsp;after seeing the quality of its customer interactions decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, a study by a University of Chicago researcher found AI&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/technology\/why-ai-job-loss-could-be-modest-despite-disaster-predictions\/article_c52a29aa-146d-424a-98aa-d2b3f5631f40.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">had no effect on pay or hours worked among people in Denmark<\/a>&nbsp;working in what were considered to be vulnerable professions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the layoffs at Block could indicate things are about to change \u2014 and that AI might soon have a much more pronounced effect on employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Formerly named Square \u2014 the brand name it still uses for its popular point-of-sale system \u2014 San Francisco-based Block is well known for its payment card readers used by small merchants. The company went fully remote during the COVID-19 pandemic and designated an office in Oakland as its headquarters purely for regulatory purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As of the end of last year, it had 10,205 employees, according to its latest annual report. While 2,472 of its workers were based outside the U.S., it\u2019s unclear how many are still in San Francisco or the Bay Area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Block announced Thursday it plans to cut more than 4,000 of its global employees. The company didn\u2019t say how many of those affected by the cuts are based locally. As of Friday morning, the state Employment Development Department had not received any layoff notifications from Block regarding cuts in San Francisco or elsewhere in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a post on the social-media platform X, Dorsey wrote that he was\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/jack\/status\/2027129697092731343?s=20\" target=\"_blank\">making the cuts was because \u201csomething has changed.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The AI tools the company is using and developing have \u201cfundamentally\u201d altered \u201cwhat it means to build and run a company. and that\u2019s accelerating rapidly,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Block representatives did not respond to an email seeking comment about the cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there\u2019s reason to be skeptical about Dorsey\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The cuts came as Block reported that its sales were flat last year and its profit fell by more than half to $1.3 billion. They also came as its stock price had declined 16% over the preceding year.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dorsey, though, insisted the cuts were not in response to financial pressures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not making this decision because we\u2019re in trouble,\u201d he wrote in his post on X. \u201cOur business is strong &#8230; we continue to serve more and more customers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dorsey and Block also did not disclose what positions the company is cutting or whether the layoffs are focused on particular departments. That makes it impossible to know from the outside whether the company sees the technology gaining traction with specific kinds of tasks or workloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The capabilities of AI software-coding tools appear to have jumped significantly in recent months, said James Landay, a professor in Stanford\u2019s computer-science department and the co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. Some startups and founders have shown they can use new AI tools to quickly create prototypes and become more productive, he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But many companies have found they can\u2019t just easily plug in AI and improve productivity or replace workers, Landay said. Instead, he said, many are discovering that they have to spend a lot of time and effort to redesign their roles and processes to accommodate the technology \u2014 and even then, success isn\u2019t certain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t really know which of these things are going to work and which ones are going to be digitization-AI failures as they find it harder to replace people than they thought,\u201d he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his X post, Dorsey himself seemed to suggest that Block wasn\u2019t entirely certain how its move to replace AI with workers will turn out, Landay said. In the post, Dorsey acknowledged that the move came with \u201crisk\u201d and that Block might have \u201cgotten some of [the cuts] wrong.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also announced fairly generous severance packages that include a base of 20 weeks\u2019 pay plus an additional week for each year of service at the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt almost feels like they\u2019re cutting way deeper than they need to, and then they\u2019re going to see, \u2018Where did we mess up?\u2019 and then bring people back,\u201d Landay said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>If you have a tip about tech, startups or the venture industry, contact Troy Wolverton at&nbsp;<\/em><em><a href=\"mailto:twolverton@sfexaminer.com\">twolverton@sfexaminer.com<\/a>&nbsp;or via text or Signal at (415) 515-5594.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In announcing mass layoffs this week, Block seemingly validated a fear many people have been facing lately \u2014 that artificial intelligence is going to replace human workers.&nbsp; The Oakland-based financial-services company said&nbsp;Thursday it plans to cut more than 40% of its 10,000-plus workers. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Jack&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/02\/blocks-massive-cuts-stoke-fears-about-ais-effects-on-employment\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46981,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46977\/revisions\/46981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}