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Artificial Intelligence

AI Firm's 'Stop Hiring Humans' Billboard Campaign Sparks Outrage

People are predictably unhappy about being told they don't deserve
jobs.
Lucas Ropek
By Lucas Ropek Published December 10, 2024 | Comments (76) |
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Artisan AI billboard in San Francisco (c) Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley, an AI startup called
Artisan has spent an untold sum blitzing the city with an advertising
campaign that dispenses with the need for humanity. Artisan's
tagline: "Stop Hiring Humans."

The company, which is backed by startup accelerator Y-Combinator,
sells what it calls "AI Employees" or "Artisans." What the company
actually sells is software designed to assist with customer service
and sales workflow. The company appears to have done an internal
pow-wow and decided that the most effective way to promote its
relatively mundane product was to fund an ad campaign heralding the
end of the human age.

Writing about the ad campaign, local outlet SFGate notes that the
posters--which are strewn all over the city--include plugs like the
following:

    "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance"
    "Artisan's Zoom cameras will never 'not be working' today."
    "Hire Artisans, not humans."
    "The era of AI employees is here."

Yes, grim stuff. At first glance, you might wonder who the target
audience for these billboards is. After all, the billboards will
mostly be viewed by humans, and, as far as can be discerned, most
humans enjoy being employed. As such, it's a media campaign that
would seem to discriminate against its core audience. Yet beneath the
initial ridiculousness of it all, there is an obvious explanation:
the ads are designed to make people mad and, thus, grab headlines.

In an interview with SFGate, the company's CEO, Jaspar
Carmichael-Jack, defended his company's decision to advertise its
product by promoting the end of the human labor force. "They are
somewhat dystopian, but so is AI," the CEO told the outlet, of the
ads. "The way the world works is changing." He added: "We wanted
something that would draw eyes -- you don't draw eyes with boring
messaging."

Yes, Carmichael-Jack was clearly trying to tap into Americans'
outrage over AI--and he has succeeded. I am writing about him, after
all. He has effectively banked the predictable outrage that his media
campaign was designed to inspire and is now being interviewed by
journalists.

Yet, in very much the same way that he is currently using us to
promote his company, maybe we can use Carmichael-Jack to make a
point. It is Carmichael-Jackson's admission that his billboards are
"dystopian"--just like the product he's selling--that gets to the heart
of what is so fucked up about the whole thing. It's obvious that
Silicon Valley's code monkeys now embrace a fatalistic bent of
history towards the Bladerunner-style hellscape their market
imperatives are driving us. They're through with acting like they're
making the world a better place. If it gets in the way of making
money, there's no point in even pretending.

Artificial intelligence

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