‘As a society, it worries me…’: Vishal Sikka on Jack Dorsey’s Block layoffs being AI driven

Vishal Sikka

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast displacing jobs and the world has to rethink this paradigm shift of jobs and skills in a hurry, said Vishal Sikka, Founder of Vianai Systems and former Infosys CEO.

Sikka’s comments came in reaction to Jack Dorsey’s Block cutting 4,000 jobs -- reducing its workforce by nearly half. The financial technology firm described this as a bet on AI changing the future of labour productivity.

Speaking at Rising Bharat Summit 2026 on February 28, Sikka emphasised that such a huge quantum of layoffs at Block has to be an impact of AI as the company is ultimately into software development that has witnessed leapfrogs in efficiency improvement through AI.

“A small number of people who understand what they are doing (with AI), can drive a very unreasonable efficiency gain,” Sikka said.

He added, “As a society it worries me, how are we going to deal with this. Because AI will undoubtedly create job displacement. But in the longer term I am hopeful. AI can be one of those tools that can help us irrespective of what we are doing whether software development, research, writing a movie script etc. AI amplifies our work. That’s incredibly powerful.”

AI changing job roles

Sikka argued that AI should not be seen as a “substitute for critical thinking.” It can only support people to amplify their work.

“We cannot outsource our thinking. That would be a disaster. We have to use AI as an aide…Some people call it the overview effect, we have to surround ourselves with a particular topic to fully understand, then use AI as a tool to amplify and help us do things much faster,” Sikka said.

He advised that there has to be a human in the loop to “critically examine” and ensure the work done by AI is accurate. As humans, our world view is based on the 4-dimensional experience of it, while text-based prompts and inputs would only capture a “linear 2-dimensional” world view for AI.