“It’s a very difficult time, and everyone knows it is,” Dan Schulman said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published Sunday (April 19). “So I think being authentic, being realistic, telling the truth, as best you can” is crucial.
He added that this belief is why the telecom launched a $20 million career-transition and retraining fund for the “age of AI” when the company began cutting 13,000 jobs last year.
“Change is necessary, but it can be difficult,” Schulman, former CEO of PayPal wrote in a message to workers at the time.
The WSJ characterizes these warnings as a departure from the chief executives at other public companies: excited about AI’s potential but reluctant to discuss the idea of job cuts.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, told CNBC in February that while some roles will be replaced, “there will be other jobs created.”
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However, the report noted, several companies have mentioned AI as they initiated sweeping job cuts. Block, for example, cut close to half its staff earlier this year and predicted other firms would take the same path.
The WSJ also cited a Boston Consulting Group report that predicts that AI will reshape around half of U.S. jobs in two to three years, with 15% ultimately being eliminated.
The report also describes Schulman recommending to staff to use AI to write an obituary to see how it describes their lives, or to use it to write poems for loved ones.
“Like it or not, we live in the age of AI. I happen to like it,” he said in the interview. “It’s like we all wanted to live in the Renaissance or, like, when fire was first invented — how cool would that be?” he added. “We’re in that stage. We’re just not appreciating it for what it could be.”
Writing about the threat of AI-related job losses following Block’s layoffs, PYMNTS argued that the changes were following a pattern similar to that of earlier computing cycles.
“The introduction of personal computers reduced demand for some clerical roles but fueled growth in IT services, software development and digital marketing. The internet reshaped retail and media but created entire new sectors in eCommerce and cloud infrastructure,” PYMNTS wrote. “AI appears to be accelerating that restructuring, particularly in industries like FinTech, where large portions of work involve data, transactions and risk analysis.”
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