Tour De Workforce 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.” "Stop Hiring Humans" billboards around SF pic.twitter.com/jBUSErvMfK — AI Notkilleveryoneism Memes (@AISafetyMemes) December 12, 2024 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…Humans Alarmed at AI Company's "Stop Hiring Humans" Billboards