Block (XYZ) CFO Amrita Ahuja holds a less dystopian view of artificial intelligence than disgruntled AI researcher Jacob Coxon and believes tech companies can strike a balance between providing users with choice and protecting them from AI harms.

“We can’t be paternalistic in how people use it, but we also have to have safeguards to ensure that we’ve got secure systems across how different companies, how people’s money moves,” Ahuja told Yahoo Finance from the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech Conference (video above). “When you think about money, health, these things that are core to our humanity, and core to our civilization, those are really important things that we need to have safeguards around. It can’t be any one individual company doing that. It’s got to be a level playing field.”

Ahuja, who is also on the boards of Discord (DISO.PVT) and Airbnb (ABNB), was responding to a question about a moment that has captured the tech industry’s attention this week.

Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) researcher Jacob Coxon abruptly resigned and left the AI industry entirely, warning that tech giants are “gambling with our lives” in a reckless race toward self-improving super-intelligence.

Having spent three years at OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), Coxon alleged that executives at both companies are acting irresponsibly.

Ahuja pushed back on the narrative that tech leaders aren’t thinking deeply enough about AI safeguards.

“We want to create a sustainable ecosystem. We want to innovate, we want to move quickly. But we also want to make sure we’re responsible in how we do that,” Ahuja said.

The growing impact of AI this year has been far-reaching, from the building of new data centers to vast improvements to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

It has also weighed heavily on white-collar jobs, as Ahuja can attest.

Block’s AI-related layoffs in February were particularly painful, as the workforce was cut by a whopping 40%. Layoffs have also come en masse from Oracle (ORCL), Meta, Amazon (AMZN), and others in the tech space.

Technology again led all sectors in layoffs in July, with Challenger, Gray & Christmas announcing 9,867 job cuts in July, bringing the total to 149,023 so far this year. That is a 67% increase announced in the tech sector through July 2025.

Technology now accounts for 31% of all job cuts announced this year.

“Tech remains the center of gravity for this year’s cuts, and AI is still the reason companies give,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas.