Pro-Worker AI Is Real. When It's Good for Business
Protecting workers and protecting margins turns out to be the same thing, for some companies
Late last month, Jack Dorsey announced Block would cut roughly 4,000 jobs, arguing that AI was changing what the company needed from its workforce. The explanation landed in the middle of a debate that's been running through corporate America for two years: is AI actually driving these decisions, or are companies dressing up ordinary cost-cutting in new language?
Usually it's both. What matters more is why AI leads to redeployment at some companies and layoffs at others.
Goldman Sachs economists estimated AI was eliminating somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 jobs per month across exposed U.S. industries, a real number, but a fraction of the layoffs being attributed to it.
Meanwhile, Jamie Dimon was telling JPMorgan investors the bank already had "huge redeployment plans" for its own people. Walmart's Doug McMillon was committing to hold headcount flat at around two million workers. Some companies clearly mean their pro-worker pledges.
The companies making good on their pledges share a business model where human judgment, trust, or presence has direct, measurable revenue value, and where AI makes those qualities more productive rather than eliminating the need for them.
Walmart’s headcount-flat pledge is a reshuffling, with some roles compressing while others expand, and workers in disrupted positions offered redeployment rather than exits. But the logic is simpler: McMillon has said the company will keep putting "people in front of people" in stores for as long as its customers are human. AI handles the back end. People handle the relationship.
Read more: According to Walmart, AI Doesn’t Work If People Don’t
JPMorgan Chase tells a similar story with numbers to back it up. In its Asset and Wealth Management division, AI tools contributed to a 20% increase in gross sales between 2023 and 2024, and the bank projects individual advisers will expand their client rosters by as much as 50% over the next three to five years as back-office tasks become automated. Operations and support roles contracted while client-facing teams grew by roughly the same proportion. Finance depends on trust and regulatory judgment. AI improves that work without replacing the people doing it.
IBM offers an instructive path forward. The company confirmed AI chatbots replaced hundreds of HR workers, but has said it will hire more young workers going forward. The reasoning: eliminating entry-level roles now would produce a shortage of experienced middle managers a decade from now. The talent pipeline has long-term commercial value.
Where the Pledge Breaks Down
Most pro-worker AI pledges look very little like Walmart or JPMorgan. Amazon has invested more than $1.2 billion in upskilling since 2019 while eliminating 14,000 jobs in 2025. Microsoft's initiative aims to credential 20 million people in AI skills, most of them outside the company, while its own employees saw significant cuts in the same period.
Accenture is the starkest case. The firm that advises companies on AI-driven workforce transformation cut roughly 22,000 employees in 2025. CEO Julie Sweet stated plainly that reskilling is a viable path for some skills gaps and a dead end for others. The company concluded internally that the playbook has limits, and acted accordingly.
The pattern is consistent. Jobs tied directly to revenue tend to survive AI adoption longer. Internal support roles, where software can do the same work more cheaply, are often the first to disappear.
The Buffer Isn't a Guarantee
Economists studying AI adoption often find the technology replaces tasks rather than entire occupations. Workers lose parts of their jobs before they lose the job itself. Daron Acemoglu estimates current AI technologies could increase productivity by roughly 0.5% to 0.7% over the next decade, a figure he has called disappointing relative to the promises being made by the industry.
Robotics has improved rapidly but still struggles with the dexterous tasks common in retail stores, warehouses, and service environments, which is why physical presence remains a buffer. The same companies holding headcount flat today are tracking exactly which functions are shrinking as the technology matures. They are, in effect, running a clock.
Frontline workers are behind office functions in the queue. Where human qualities remain commercially indispensable, the pro-worker pledge tends to hold. Where those qualities are replaceable, the pledge tends to be a number in a press release.
The difference, in most cases, is incentives.