AI, Layoffs, and the Choices We Make

When I read Jack Dorsey’s announcement that Block would cut more than 4,000 jobs, 40% of their workforce, my first reaction was surprise. The scale of the layoffs was startling. His reasoning was impressive. Bold.

Block, the financial technology company behind Square and Cash App, is not in trouble. In his note to employees, Dorsey explained that the business remains strong. But the intelligence tools they are building and using now allow smaller teams to do the work.

In an industry built around efficiency, that logic makes sense.

Block exists to reduce friction in financial transactions: payments, credit, the movement of money through digital systems. If artificial intelligence can perform large amounts of that intellectual labor faster and more accurately than people, a company designed around efficiency will reorganize itself around that capability.

Reading his announcement, I didn’t feel anger. I didn’t feel fear. I felt relief.

Relief that the work I lead is organized around a different set of priorities.

Artificial intelligence will change our economy quickly. The United States is largely a service economy. Many of those services involve processing information, coordinating transactions, moving data from one place to another. AI systems can now perform many of those tasks rapidly and at enormous scale.

That shift will reshape industries. Many jobs will disappear. Others will change in ways we are only beginning to understand.

AI isn’t doing this to us.

We are using AI to do this to our society.

Technology does not decide how it will be used. People do.

The rules guiding those decisions are largely written by capitalism, the economic system most businesses operate within. Inside that rulebook, efficiency, scale, and financial return rise to the top. Venture capital has fueled the creation of AI designed to optimize all three. In the hands of investors seeking return, those tools will further concentrate money, power, and influence.

That is a choice about values.

It is also possible to make a different choice.

Imagine a future where more of us spend our working lives doing the things machines cannot do: teaching children, caring for elders, preparing food, tending gardens, stewarding land, leading communities, helping neighbors through difficult moments.

That work is built on presence. Trust. Human connection.

It cannot be automated.

Artificial intelligence can support that work too, if we choose to use it that way.

At the organization I lead, we are experimenting with AI not as a replacement for people, but as a way to help people connect more easily and more often: to coordinate their work, communicate clearly, and co-create a more human way of working.

It does not increase efficiency.

It does not improve profit margins.

What it does is strengthen relationships.

The same technology that can concentrate wealth and power can also help people build stronger communities. The difference is not in the tool. The difference is in the values guiding the people who use it.

AI isn’t deciding the future of work.

Shareholders are.

Just as we built artificial intelligence, we also built the economic systems that guide how it is used. The prevailing rulebook prioritizes efficiency and financial return.

But rulebooks are choices.

I chose to organize the work I lead around lovingkindness and authentic relationships between people.

The people I work with are building that future together, using new tools to strengthen connection rather than replace it.

It turns out a more human way of working is possible.

Here in Santa Fe, where art, care, land, and community still shape daily life, that doesn’t feel radical.

It feels practical.

You might decide to try it too.

This column ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican on March 10, 2026, under Business Different.