Jack Dorsey’s 4,000 job cuts at Block arouse suspicions of AI-washing

Read more at straitstimes.com.

NEW YORK – When Block laid off nearly half its staff this week, co-founder Jack Dorsey offered a seemingly simple explanation: artificial intelligence was allowing the company to do more with fewer employees.

The announcement, though, landed at the centre of a complex debate over AI and the future of work: on one side, genuine fear that the technology will displace jobs at an unprecedented pace; on the other, deep cynicism that companies are exploiting that fear to dress up old-fashioned cost-cutting as technological futurism. 

The possibility that companies are spinning employees and investors and using AI as a shiny excuse for ugly layoffs has become widespread enough that it has a nickname: AI-washing.

Block’s recent history suggests that AI adoption is not the only factor influencing its staffing decisions. The company loaded up on workers during and after the pandemic, more than tripling its employee base between 2019 and 2022, and has been slower than peers to scale back. Its stock had fallen roughly 40 per cent since the beginning of 2025, a trajectory that had nothing to do with AI and everything to do with a business that had grown unwieldy.

“When I look at the overall employee number, this is more about the business being bloated for so long than it is about AI,” said Zachary Gunn, a senior analyst at Financial Technology Partners, an investment bank focused on fintechs.

While companies are eager to show investors they are embracing new technology, experts on workplace automation say that AI tools have not gotten to the point where they are causing significant cutbacks in the labor market.