Jack Dorsey, the CEO of technology company Block, announced yesterday that the company would be reducing its workforce from more than 10,000 employees to less than 6,000.

Dorsey insisted that Block remains successful, and money has nothing to do with the layoffs. Instead, it’s because of AI. “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” he explained.

Block is just the latest in a string of many companies that have made the decision to lay off employees because of the impact AI has had on their business. While many people have always had reservations about AI, some are just starting to wake up to how detrimental this could be to society as a whole if everyone loses their jobs.

Many people are wondering what ‘regular people’ will do after AI takes over their jobs, leaving them unable to buy the things they need.

The question was posed in an almost prophetic way by an X user known as Bark a little over a week ago. They said, “Genuine question … if AI replaces all of the jobs and prices keep going up, what exactly is the plan for regular people?”

Others have had similar thoughts. Another X user named Barney said, “Somebody explain to me what regular people are supposed to do when AI takes their job and everything still costs more every month.”

Four months ago, a Reddit user seemed to question if the use of AI would actually lead to the implosion of business as we know it. “If AI takes over most jobs and [leaves] humans without work, how are companies going to sell their products and services when everyone is BROKE?” they questioned. No one really had a good answer, other than suggesting that CEOs simply don’t care or choose to ignore the obvious, and wondering if we may revert to some form of serfdom.

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AI layoffs could lead to a very real economic crisis.

According to Josh Tyrangiel, a writer for The Atlantic, prominent CEOs have insisted that AI was going to wipe out a significant portion of jobs for quite some time now, but people still tried to take an optimistic view. Expert economists have said that they don’t yet know how AI will impact jobs, and that it could take years to see any real effect.

Economist Anton Korinek completely disagrees. He has studied AI for years, and he told Tyrangiel that “a very noticeable labor-market effect” could occur this year. He added, “We should at least consider the possibility that what they are telling us may come true.”

This, Time Magazine writers Luke Drago and Rudolf Laine argued, could lead to what is known as “The Intelligence Curse,” which they described as “powerful actors such as governments and companies create [artificial general intelligence], and subsequently lose their incentives to invest in people.”

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Some people may call this perspective alarmist, but it’s what the people who are actually in charge of disseminating AI have repeatedly stated will happen.

On the one hand, you could say that companies simply won’t need “regular people” anymore, so they’ll forget they exist. However, it does raise the question of whether a vicious cycle could occur. If no one has a job anymore, and no one has money anymore, they can’t actually pay for the goods those companies produce, meaning the companies will, in turn, no longer be profitable.

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There’s no way to describe what would happen in this case other than the actual downfall of society as we know it. The U.S. was built on capitalism, which would collapse, but it also stresses that something like a universal basic income should never be a consideration. The entire country might have to be restructured.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that 71% of Americans are afraid the implementation of AI could lead to widespread unemployment. Some people may be willing to stick their heads in the sand and ignore this very real problem, but the majority of Americans are well aware of how bad this could be. Now, the pressure is on people in positions of power to slow down the things they have already set in motion.

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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.