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Twitter founder and Block Inc (formerly Square) CEO Jack Dorsey announced<\/a> late last month that his fintech venture was making \u201cone of the hardest decisions in the history of our company\u201d by \u201creducing our organization by nearly half.\u201d<\/p>\n Dorsey cited rapid improvements in AI tech as the primary reason, sending shockwaves across Wall Street. He\u2019d previously instructed employees to embrace AI at all costs<\/a>, triggering major anxiety over job security that turned out to be warranted.<\/p>\n The culling perfectly played into ongoing fears that AI automation is coming for white-collar jobs<\/a>, a major job market and economic disruption that workers are becoming increasingly worried about \u2014 and which clearly has execs salivating<\/a>.<\/p>\n As big tech was incurring losses over ongoing fears of an AI bubble starting to burst, Block investors sent a clear signal, sending shares of Dorsey\u2019s company soaring following his announcement.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes,\u201d Dorsey told analysts during a call, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the CEO\u2019s boasting failed to convince everybody that the AI-triggered job apocalypse is nigh. As former employee Aaron Zamost, who was head of communications at Square from 2015 to 2020, argued in an essay published by the New York Times<\/a>, there are likely a litany of other factors at play apart from AI.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question on minds everywhere: Is AI a terrifying new reality in which the work they do might no longer be viable?\u201d he wrote. \u201cOr is Block\u2019s announcement just a convenient and flashy new cover for typical corporate downsizing?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe truth is, nobody knows the answer \u2014 not even Block itself,\u201d Zamost argued.<\/p>\n The former head of comms wrote that Dorsey had \u201clong placed big bets based on a read of early signals\u201d and \u201cshow a tendency to identify patterns, see enormous growth as an inevitability and go all in with conviction.\u201d<\/p>\n But whether AI really explains the company\u2019s major downscaling instead of neatly providing a \u201cnew justification for layoffs\u201d remains unclear at best. For one, Block had already seen major rounds of layoffs in both 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n Its prior history is relevant as well. Between the end of 2019 and end of 2023, the company\u2019s head count ballooned from 4,000 to almost 13,000 employees, per the WSJ, a major pandemic-era hiring spree.<\/p>\n \u201cLook closer at specific cuts \u2014 like shrinking the policy team and eliminating diversity and inclusion roles, former colleagues told me \u2014 and Block\u2019s latest reorganization reads like standard prioritization and cost management, not an AI-driven reinvention,\u201d Zamost wrote.<\/p>\n Particularly, executives forcing their employees to adopt AI tools, often against their will, could trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy at companies claiming to be \u201cAI first,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n \u201cThat future, however, is colliding with the reality of what AI can actually do,\u201d Zamost wrote, pointing to AI models generating \u201cuseless email summaries, antisemitic chatbots, and AI overviews that can\u2019t get even basic facts right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot all the roles I\u2019ve heard that Block is eliminating can be handled by AI, yet executives are treating it as equally useful today to all disciplines,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Other analysts were equally unconvinced by Dorsey\u2019s argument that AI had allowed him to cut almost half his company\u2019s workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vast majority of these cuts were probably not due to AI,\u201d corporate investment bank Mizuho Americas\u2019 Dan Dolev told the WSJ.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t an AI story,\u201d former Block employee Jason Karsh tweeted<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s organizational bloat wearing an AI costume.\u201d<\/p>\n