‘Stop Hiring Humans’ billboard campaign sparks job loss fears

Artisan AI's provocative billboard campaign urging companies to "stop hiring humans" lit up Times Square and San Francisco this week, igniting fierce backlash on social media.

Reddit users were saying the signs should be pulled down, and a few people were sort of openly cheering the vandalism, like, as the AI threat to the job market became impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile, traders predict there’s an 86% chance tech layoffs will speed up in 2026, a year where automation anxiety is already basically everywhere in worker talk. That short, three-word slogan sort of locked in the dread that’s been building for months, meaning AI companies could be treating human employment as “outdated” or, you know, not needed anymore.

Artisan AI co-founder Jaspar Carmichael-Jack posted a long article explaining the intentions behind the campaign, noting that their poster was intended to target the job rather than mankind as a whole.

Artisan's product, called Ava, was created to automate the process of sending cold emails, work which, according to Carmichael-Jack, is soul-crushing boredom that causes 60% of business development representatives to quit after just 14 months.

"The job, in its current shape, is to type a slightly tweaked version of the same opening line into a tool eight hundred times a week," Carmichael-Jack wrote in his article, describing the monotonous task that Ava was made to automate.

It is worth noting that Artisan does not plan on getting rid of the BDR completely. Artisan designed a human dialler because cold calling involves real-time communication, which is simply too difficult for machines.

Carmichael-Jack acknowledges the company has a responsibility to advocate for universal income and shorter work weeks as AI productivity gains reshape employment. "The honest move is to be clear about what's changing and build products that genuinely work alongside people," he stated.