The financial services company Block will cut its headcount by 40%, citing AI advancements, and predicted that other businesses would follow suit.
The firm’s co-founder, former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, said “intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week” and a smaller team could “do more and do it better.” Block’s shares went up 24% on the news.
Other companies have made similar moves, including Amazon and JPMorgan, although skeptics suspect they are ordinary layoffs under an AI smokescreen: Tech firms in particular saw hiring sprees during the pandemic, and are returning to 2019 numbers, CNN reported. Nonetheless, AI tools have become more powerful, and software firms’ stocks cratered when Anthropic unveiled more powerful coding tools.
