New York —
As if on cue, days after a viral essay warned of an artificial intelligence-fueled economic catastrophe, payments company Block said it was laying off nearly half its staff. The company, which owns Square and Cash App, explicitly linked the cuts to AI tools that have “changed what it means to build and run a company.”
That is a deep cut, even for the tech industry, which bulked up during the pandemic and has been shedding thousands of jobs in recent months. And unlike most of other industry cuts, executives at Block weren’t “right-sizing”