In light of widespread speculation about the impact of artificial intelligence on workers in the Bay Area and beyond, a series of billboards are tapping into these concerns, promoting what appears to be a nightmare scenario in which humans are completely replaced by computers.
The CEO of the company behind those billboards told CBS News Bay Area that he wanted to make a statement.
For anyone who’s ever worried about AI coming into play, this is an unnerving billboard. In San Francisco, the ads advise companies to “stop hiring people.” Some signs on city bus stops go so far as to say that the company’s AI employees “don’t come to work hungover” or “take naps on the job.”
Artisan AI founder and CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack admitted that the billboards tap into common fears about artificial intelligence. He was also quick to acknowledge what many may already suspect; the advertisements are deliberately suggestive and should not be taken literally.
“I think going into this, we knew that if we made billboards like everyone else, no one would care. If I put up a billboard that said, ‘We’re going to improve your outbound sales,’ we do that.” It didn’t matter. We would spend the money and get nothing from it. So we went out, knowing we had to be provocative. We had to do something different to get attention.”
Carmichael-Jack says its AI sales software is not for companies looking to cut jobs, but for companies looking to automate unwanted tasks.
“And they’re happy to be able to move from the manual work they don’t like to do to real human work and do things that only a human can do,” says Carmichael-Jack. “And I think that’s what we’re really striving for. We’re going to look to replace the work that people don’t want to do so that they can do the work that they really enjoy.”
But the ads play on a widespread fear. An August poll found that 48% of working Americans think AI will reduce the number of jobs available in their industry.
This raises the question of whether that actually happens and how such changes would be measured. Companies usually don’t just come out and publicly detail their private strategies or explain how AI could impact their employment. So the first step is to learn something that companies don’t necessarily provide details about.
“So we overcome that challenge by using very detailed data on those companies’ job postings and their employees’ resumes,” explains Anastassia Fedyk, a behavioral economist at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “For example, think of LinkedIn profiles, PDF resumes or the resumes that people submit to job vacancies, so we can see who the companies are hiring.”
Fedyk is part of a remarkable quest. With help from partners around the world, they track enough resumes and LinkedIn pages to cover 60% to 70% of the U.S. professional workforce. So they’ve been able to see which companies have hired AI expertise years before those companies would publicly talk about those programs.
“And then tie that to what’s happening at the company,” Fedyk said. “The public information, like their turnover, their employment numbers. That’s in the reports.”
And based on that, they can say that most companies moving to AI are actually adding employees.
“On the net, in most sectors – and again, there are some sectors and some tasks where it replaces jobs – but on the net in most sectors, employment does not decrease when the company starts investing in AI,” Fedyk said . “They’re using AI tools for innovation. Then you have extra product patents, extra trademarks, you have to hire extra product managers to manage products. You need more salespeople to sell the product.”
“We actually secretly love people,” Carmichael-Jack told KPIX. “We have a lot of people on our team and we’re hiring a lot more.”
Artisan’s billboards probably say more about the business madness of AI than about its impact on human employment. It’s worth noting that Artisan is advertising to potential buyers in a market that is still taking shape. Many traditional companies are thinking about what AI could do for them, and emerging AI producers are fighting each other for that business.
“So there’s a lot of competition for market share between the companies that produce the technology,” Fedyk said of the billboard blitz. “That obviously leads to more catchy advertising.”
“And to be completely honest, I don’t think anyone should stop hiring,” Carmichael-Jack added. “There are a lot of things that humans can do that AI can’t do. And if we get to the point where we don’t need humans anymore, we should have a universal income by then, and there shouldn’t be a five-day work week.”
