Over the last year in San Francisco, AI advertising has blanketed our streets, BART Stations, bus stops, and freeways. Because, despite how needless humans are meant to become, apparently, AI still needs real-life people to buy in first, before the robots can then take over.

The most infamous campaign began last year in December 2024 with billboards saying “Stop Hiring Humans” & AI “won’t complain about work-life balance”. Slogans strictly designed to piss everyone off, with the strategy being that enraging the public would give the company free exposure and name recognition, through what the kids call ‘rage-baiting’.

The campaign worked. In the sense that it got national news coverage, Google searches for their brand name shot up, and everyone in Silicon Valley now knew their name.

They all hated their name; the feedback from the public was 99% negative, and the message to them was near unanimously ‘fuck these guys’. But ‘Artisan’ AI was now on the map, so to speak.

If you would like to see the public’s feedback firsthand, I suggest browsing the Reddit AMA with Artisan CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack,

Unfortunately for Artisan (and us) they aren’t making a game-changing product that will help humanity, or ‘disrupt’ much of anything. Artisan makes a messaging bot for sales emails and eventually cold calling…because that’s what the internet needs more of…spam emails and calls.

Now let’s talk about some of the corporate AI ‘counter revolution’.

There are many people in tech who actually care about humans and want to do AI integration responsibly. Unfortunately, we don’t hear about them very often because 'being responsible’ doesn’t enrage people and make headlines.

A CEO who is concerned about the irresponsible development and broken conversation around AI is Nathan Strum of Abby Connect. And they launched a satirical billboard campaign of their own to try and get people’s attention and spread a different message.

The ‘AI parenting’ billboards (Nuture OS) at first glance are pretty horrifying, but if you actually take the time to read them, you see the satire. CEO Nathan Strum, the man running the company behind the campaign, told me that they chose ‘AI parenting’ as the subject because it’s ridiculous on its face, but sadly, almost believable given how cynical AI tech companies can be.

His company Abby Connect, provides virtual receptionist tools for small businesses, like dentist offices for example. Strum told me that what gets him excited is that AI can make things more democratic, that AI tools are making things easier for small business owners, who couldn’t otherwise afford things like a full-time receptionist with all the fancy software tools. Strum believes that AI will empower small teams to do more and compete with the larger players.

“Society is going to be happier and have a better lifestyle if we give more power to the small business owners,” Strum said. He wants to train humans to use AI tools to do more, as opposed to replacing them. “You're going to see a shift of the large companies laying off employees and the small businesses hiring and new people starting businesses,” Strum said.

The 4 principles behind their ‘Responsible’ AI campaign are:

1. AI should never erase people.
2. AI should be transparent.
3. AI should protect, not exploit.
4. AI should share its gains.

Another billboard campaign uses satire and dystopian messaging to get people’s attention and motivate them to do something tangible about the problem. Replacement.AI is using an LLM to help people contact their local legislators to complain about the irresponsibility and lack of AI legislation.

Replacement AI also draws attention to the massive amount of IP theft the AI companies are perpetrating on creators:

Apparently, AI is here to stay, and as it is further integrated into every part of our digital lives, the positive message, if there is one is; we’ve got to support the legislators who see people before profits, and the companies who want to empower their employees as opposed to replace them.