Dorsey’s 4,000 Job Cuts at Block Arouse Suspicions of AI-Washing

When Block Inc. 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 center 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 ...