This viral advert taps into our worst fears about AI

A campaign urging employers to ‘stop hiring humans’ left Helen Coffey raging - because it hit too close to home

- Helen Coffey

I was standing waiting for the Tube when I looked up and saw it — the sentence that would instantly spike my cortisol levels and ruin my day. “Stop hiring humans,” read the words, all in caps, plastered onto the wall of the Northern line. And below that: “The Era of AI Employees Is Here.”

At first I thought it must be a joke, albeit one in very poor taste. Or maybe it was one of those viral bits of activism — designed to get onlookers all riled up, only to find upon googling that it was all part of a clever campaign protesting against the onslaught of AI. Yes, that must be it. For surely nobody would be so stupid, so crass, as to design an advert counselling against employing people - especially when its audience would be comprised solely of grumpy commuters. Specifically, grumpy human commuters.

I tried to shake off my initial kneejerk fury as I stepped aboard the incoming train, only to be confronted with yet another, smaller advert. This one had a picture of a woman’s face - an AI woman, not a real one, going by her poreless skin and violet eyes - with a zero-star rating next to it and the quote, “Ava took my job and did it better.” It had the same brand name as the bigger ad underneath: Artisan. This one didn’t feel very... activism-y. It felt like a straight-up advert - one taken directly from the pages of a dystopian novel.