The British founder of an AI company based in San Francisco claims to have been replaced… by an AI.
It is the latest marketing gimmick from Artisan AI – backed by prestigious accelerator Y Combinator – which late last year unleashed a major advertising campaign in the US city urging people to ‘stop hiring humans’.
The campaign saw 50m online impressions and placed Ava, the company’s flagship AI business development representative, in the spotlight. Ava is now used by 300+ organisations and has seen Artisan’s annual recurring revenue surge to $5m in just nine months.
Artisan received hundreds of death threats and hate mail, but its CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack said later that the campaign was meant to grab attention – not undermine human workers – as he backtracked on his earlier message.
Who is Jaspar Carmichael-Jack? Briton launches ‘stop hiring humans’ campaign in San Francisco
However Carmichael-Jack, in his early 20s and from Surrey, has doubled down on the campaign by claiming to have replaced himself with an AI agent – ‘Jaspar 2.0’ – although given the date, it is most likely an April Fool’s Day gag.
“While I stand by the message, I realise it may have been ahead of its time,” said Carmichael-Jack in a LinkedIn video announcing his ‘resignation’. “That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to step down.”
His AI counterpart is described as a “hyper-efficient, emotionless, data-maximising machine designed to lead Artisan to become a unicorn by the end of the year”.
Artisan is back in Times Square with a new billboard of an AI-generated version of Carmichael-Jack that reads: “We replaced our CEO with AI. Replace yours now.”
Jaspar 2.0 claims to set vision through real-time market analysis, hire executives based on performance metrics, run thousands of meetings simultaneously, and execute strategy without ego or fatigue.
Carmichael-Jack founded the AI employee startup in Silicon Valley in 2023 with Dr Rupert Dodkins, who has a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford. Dr Dodkins left the company in May last year.