Controversy surrounding street advertising proclaiming: AI will take your job

There has been a controversial campaign on the streets of San Francisco in recent days as the company Artisan covers public roads with advertisements depicting bot and the message “stop hiring people.”

The company, backed by startup accelerator Y-Combinator, sells what it calls “AI employees” or “Craftsmen”. The company actually sells software designed to make the customer service and sales process easier. The company apparently had an internal discussion and decided that the most effective way to promote its relatively mundane product was to finance an advertising campaign announcing the end of the human era.

Speaking about the advertising campaign, local publication SFGate notes that posters scattered throughout the city contain the following messages:

• “Artisans won’t complain about work-life balance”
• “Artisan Zoom cameras will never stop working today.”
• “Hire artisans, not people.”
• “The era of artificial intelligence employees has arrived.”

Ava, Artificial Intelligence Sales Representative

Artisan also features Ava, an employee who is an artificial intelligence sales consultant.

“Our first technician, Ava, automates the entire outbound sales process and can be set up in 10 minutes of conversation. Ava creates TCP, maintains her database of over 270,000,000 contacts, creates and sends highly personalized email sequences, and schedules appointments in her calendar. And you can manage all the features and settings by talking to Ava via Slack,” the company says about its flagship product.