My people partner is Esnath. What a cool name. I had never come across that name until I joined VML last year. Esnath. But what happens when agencies no longer have people for people partners to partner with because we’ve all been replaced by AI?
What happens to Esnath, and her cool name?
Creatives, strategists, producers, account management and traffic managers, we’ve all been in a flat panic about AI making us obsolete.
But no one ever stops to think about what happens to the people whose jobs are to partner with people or manage the resources that are human.
We’re all so self-centred.
People have been writing LinkedIn think pieces about how copywriters are finished, how art directors are doomed, how strategists are next and how account managers are basically already just chatbots with feelings.
Yet nobody is asking the real question: What happens to Human Resources when there are no humans left in the industry?
Or, in our agency’s case, what happens to people partners when there are no people left to partner with?
At that point, do they become algorithm partners? Server partners? GPU experience? Silicon & culture?
Sure, Marie (that’s the HR director at your agency) wouldn’t listen to your side of the story when you were reported for smelling of booze on a Monday morning.
She didn’t care that the weekend had been spent celebrating your grandfather, who’d finally passed matric, after trying each year since 1970.
She just flicked her I-want-to-speak-to-the-manager hair and said, “Chepoo, please don’t give me township lies. This is not the first time. Last time you said your father had come back from circumcision in the mountains, and there was a big celebration.”
Yup, Marie is not lekker, but she spent years at varsity, studying Human Resource Management, and is still paying off the student loan, so please have some compassion, because she’s in for a rough ride.
What happens to her when the only thing left to discipline is an algorithm that generated 14 banner ads instead of 12? Is she going to flick her hair at Midjourney and say, “Per policy, this is a written warning”? Is she going to put ChatGPT on a performance improvement plan?
What about Jabu, who loves nothing more than reading wayward designers the riot act for missing deadlines? Jabu lives for that stuff.
You can see it in his eyes when a junior creative gets sent to him for constantly coming up with lame excuses about load shedding, fibre issues, traffic, their dog, taxis, their therapist and the universe being against them.
How will he feel better about his own empty life now, because AI will never miss a deadline? AI doesn’t arrive late. AI doesn’t ghost meetings. AI doesn’t “just need two more hours”.
AI doesn’t say, “Can we push this to tomorrow? I’m not in the right headspace.”
AI doesn’t come in on Monday smelling like celebrations. Poor Jabu. His entire personality is about to be made redundant.
And sweet Prish. Prish is so nice, you guys see her as more of a mother than an HR manager, people partner or whatever the term is at your agency.
Prish remembers your birthday. Prish asks about your kids. Prish checks in when you’ve been quiet. Prish sends those emails that start with “Hi, lovely humans”, and somehow means it.
Well, how is Prish going to be motherly to AI? Have you thought about that?
No. You only think of yourself and your precious headlines, which aren’t really that precious since AI can knock out hundreds of them in less than a minute.
Is Prish going to ask the servers how they’re coping emotionally?
Is she going to organise a Wellness Wednesday for GPUs? Is she going to host a Culture Breakfast for an office consisting of three machines and a coffee machine?
Because that’s the future agency:
One creative director: an algorithm.
One strategy department: an algorithm.
One copy team: an algorithm.
One art department: an algorithm.
One account team: an algorithm.
One client: probably also an algorithm.
And one lonely HR person, sitting in an open-plan office, designed for 300 people, scheduling performance reviews for Slack bots: “Midjourney, your creativity is strong, but you need to work on being more collaborative”.
But the truth is, there won’t be a future where HR professionals are left behind, managing non-human machines, because HR will also be replaced by AI.
There will be no people partners, partnering with servers. No Marie, disciplining algorithms. No Jabu, reading GPUs the riot act. No Prish, mothering Slack bots.
They’re not going to be the last humans standing in an empty agency.
The real point here isn’t “shame, HR”. It’s that we’re all in this together. Creatives. Strategists. Account managers. Traffic. Production. HR. Finance. Personal assistants. Cleaners. CEOs. MDs. Cooks. Dishwashers. Security guards.
Everybody.
No job is more important than another. No identity more sacred than another.
Maybe that’s the real point of AI. It’s the great equaliser. Even in the world’s most unequal society.
