Jack Dorsey to cut 4,000 jobs due to AI advances at Square parent Block

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Fintech company Block announced that it would be laying off 4,000 of its 10,000 employees because of gains in AI productivity,“Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey, Block’s CEO, said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday,“We’re already seeing it internally,A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better,And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.

” Block is the parent company for online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App.Investors so far appear encouraged by Dorsey’s assertion that the cuts, and increased reliance on AI, will drive profitability, analysts said.Shares increased more than 20% in pre-market trading on Friday.Block’s layoffs speak to larger fears about job cuts driven by a growing use of AI.Goldman Sachs noted in February that the increasing pace of AI adoption could drive up unemployment this year, and estimated that the technology had already resulted in 5,000 to 10,000 monthly net job losses last year.

A November study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that AI could already replace nearly 12% of the workforce in the US,The tech sector is among the most hit, and workers at other tech companies are feeling the heat, too,Marc Benioff’s Salesforce cut about 4,000 jobs last year, with the CEO saying that he “needs less heads” given AI’s efficiency,Dorsey claimed on Thursday that the decision to almost halve Block’s workforce wasn’t because the business was in trouble, and that economic performance had actually been strong,(Block beat Wall Street expectations for its fourth quarter, reporting $6.

25 bn in total revenue),Dorsey said on X that he had two choices: gradually cut his workforce over months and years – “or be honest about where we are and act on it now”,He wrote: “Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,”Block executives said on Thursday’s earnings call that the company had been increasing its reliance on AI for years, noting that some AI work streams were “nearly fully rolled out, others are earlier in their maturity”,Block had already laid off hundreds of workers in early February.

Earlier this month, employees still at the company reported that there was rapidly deteriorating employee morale and that there were requirements to use generative AI, according to Wired,Wired said it reviewed an employee complaint submitted to Dorsey in a recent all-hands meeting that said “morale is probably the worst I’ve felt in four years” and that “the overarching culture at Block is crumbling”,Dorsey acknowledged the risk of the cuts on X, and in his message to shareholders,The company’s most recent 10-K filing outlined ways its AI gamble could go wrong,“Our ability to successfully operate with a reduced workforce is expected to depend in part on the effectiveness, reliability and adoption of our proactive intelligence and AI tools,” the company noted.

“These technologies may not perform as expected, may require more time or expense to implement effectively, may introduce operational or cybersecurity risks or may fail to enhance productivity and maintain operational efficiency as expected.”“For years, we have debated whether AI would dent jobs at the margin.Now we have a public case study in which the CEO explicitly says that intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management told the Associated Press.He said: “Other large employers have announced tens of thousands of cuts in recent months.Some have downplayed the AI link.

Block did not.”
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Doom Bar maker Sharp’s Brewery in Cornwall to be closed by US owner

The Cornish brewery that makes Doom Bar ale is to be closed by its US owner, throwing the popular beer brand’s future into doubt and putting about 200 jobs at risk.The drinks company Molson Coors said it plans to shut Sharp’s Brewery in Rock, along with its national call centre in Wales, saying it was “no longer financially sustainable”.The Chicago-based company, which bought Sharp’s 15 years ago, said it was planning to close the site by the end of this year but it “remains committed” to Sharp’s beer brands.Sharp was founded in 1994, and most its sales come from Doom Bar, which is among the bestselling cask ales in the UK, and was named after a notoriously dangerous sandbank in Cornwall’s Camel estuary. Sharp’s also makes Atlantic and Twin Coast pale ales

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Table for one: is eating lunch at work on your own a bad thing?

Name: The lonely lunch.Age: Recent, but growing.Appearance: Très misérable.Why are you talking French to me? Have you gone all pretentious? I am talking French to you because this is a French problem.It is? Oui

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How to use on-the-turn milk to make an Italian classic – recipe

According to the Sustainable Food Trust, “the milk from 40,000 cows (300,000 tonnes) is tipped down the kitchen sink each year – a real slap in the face for the farmer”. Even though some supermarkets have now swapped use-by for best-before dates on their milk, those dates can still be confusing, so always do the sniff test before binning it: even if it’s a little sour, you can still cook with it.The Food Standards Agency advises that food with a best-before date can usually be tested using sensory cues such as the sniff test. And what better way to use up spent or sour milk than maiale al latte, or milk-braised pork, for which pork is slowly braised in milk and flavoured with a few aromatics until tender. The milk splits and forms large curds that thicken and caramelise the sauce, so creating a creamy rich dressing for the meat

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Nadiya Hussain on food, faith and finding her voice: ‘I get paid less than the white version of me’

In a food world where the trend is for protein and weight-loss injections and sugar is the supervillain, Nadiya’s Quick Comforts seems somewhat contrary. There are golden syrup dumplings. There is a chapter devoted to deep frying, with cheese balls and ingenious deep-fried cannelloni.“If I could write an entire book on deep frying, I absolutely would,” says Hussain with a laugh. “This is how I cook, this is how I eat, this is how I show love to my family

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Should you sanitise your strawberries? Experts on the right way to wash fruit and vegetables

You know the cost-of-living crisis is biting when videos of influencers unpacking their grocery “hauls” are viral on TikTok. Chewing through millions of views, fruit and vegetables are aesthetically plopped into a sink filled with water, piece by piece. “Sanitising” products are then added, ranging from the fizz of baking soda and vinegar to specialised vegetable soaps (“Amazon link in my bio!”). There are even expensive electronic purifiers, which shake, shimmy and bubble away in the basin, supposedly removing any nasties.But is ASMR deep-cleaning your fresh produce really necessary? And is it all too late for those of us who can barely remember to rinse our pears?For Queensland’s Rebecca Scurr, who shares what it’s like to “sell fruit for a living” to her 26,000 TikTok followers, fruit-washing videos make her “cringe so much”

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Do you really need to chill cookie dough? | Kitchen Aide

Does chilling cookie dough really make for a better result?Emily, by email “It all depends on what kind of cookie it is,” says Guardian baker Helen Goh. “Let’s say it’s a cookie that you need to stamp out – the dough needs to be firm enough to roll it, but not so firm that you can’t.” That said, the question of whether to fridge or not to fridge is probably most prevalent in the chocolate chip cookie sphere. “There’s a perceived wisdom that chilling helps the dough develop the flavour and caramelisation,” Goh says, “but, to be honest, it also makes the dough a little easier to roll and ensures it bakes evenly, which is worth far more than that slight improvement in flavour.”Recommended chilling times vary from 30 minutes to overnight, although Goh finds the latter results in a “cakey” cookie: “I’m a real Goldilocks, so I like crisp at the edges with a chewy centre