An AI startup called Artisan has managed to irritate virtually everybody with a controversial ad campaign in San Francisco, which has littered the city with billboards reading “Stop Hiring Humans.”
As you may have guessed, Artisan peddles automation — specifically, in the form of an AI “sales agent,” which is also called Artisan.
Along with its tagline suggesting human workers are obsolete, other ads from the company include eye-rolling lines like “Artisans won’t complain about work-life balance,” and “Artisan’s Zoom cameras will never ‘not be working’ today.” These are sometimes accompanied by the message: “The Era of AI Employees is Here.”
But it’s the “Stop Hiring Humans” ads that have really stuck — and are getting the biggest ad spots. Numerous large billboards and posters are plastered with the tagline, often with the uncanny likeness of a woman, which is supposed to be one of the AI’s humanlike personas, “Ava.”
Read the Room
Online, the reactions to the ads have been incandescent with fury. Creative Bloq called the campaign a “dystopian nightmare,” while numerous Reddit threads have lambasted the marketing. On X, formerly Twitter, one writer tweeted in response: “WTF are we doing as a species.”
Indeed, the whole thing is flagrantly misanthropic even by Silicon Valley’s standards. San Francisco, like other cities part of the tech locus, has a large population of homeless and continues to be deep in the throes of a housing crisis (one image that’s caught particular flak, shown above, shows a bedraggled-looking man next to one of the signs). Flippantly calling for you to remain jobless strikes the wrong tone, to say the least.
Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack seems to agree with people’s cyberpunk characterization of his ads (though “cyber-LinkedIn” might be more apt).
“They are somewhat dystopian, but so is AI,” the 23-year-old CEO told SFGate. “The way the world works is changing.”
But in an interview San Francisco Chronicle, Carmichael-Jack claimed that he’s actually a friend of the human race.
“We love humans,” he told the newspaper, laughing. “I actually don’t think people should stop hiring humans. We’re hiring a lot of humans right now.”
Rage Bait
The depressing thing: the stunt worked.
Per SFGate, Carmichael-Jack said that Artisan has seen a “crazy escalation” in its brand awareness and a spike in sales.
“We wanted something that would draw eyes — you don’t draw eyes with boring messaging,” the CEO told SFGate.
And he’s certainly right in that regard. He’s ditched “boring,” in favor of making it loud and clear what the management class really wants: taking humans out of the equation wherever possible.
This is the enthymeme that the monoliths of the tech industry dance around and dress up with all kinds of marketing language, and for good reason. As Artisan has demonstrated, if these companies were more upfront with their intentions with AI — and their attitude towards us lowly human peons — they’d face outrage like this at every turn; already, someone has smashed and torn down an Artisan bus stop poster.
