China Court Rules Against Job Cut From AI
Bloomberg reports on a recent court decision in China.
The court decided that a tech firm in eastern China had illegally fired one of its workers after he refused to take a demotion when his job was automated by AI, according to a statement published by the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court.
"The termination grounds cited by the company did not fall under negative circumstances such as business downsizing or operational difficulties, nor did they meet the legal condition that made it 'impossible to continue the employment contract,'" the court said in the article dated April 28. Companies cannot unilaterally lay off employees or cut salaries due to technological progress, the court said in a separate statement, citing the same case.
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The employee at the center of the case, a quality assurance professional at a tech company identified only as Zhou, had been responsible for checking the accuracy of outputs by large language models, according to the filing. When an AI system took over his job, he was demoted and forced to take a 40% pay cut.
When Zhou refused the reassignment, the company terminated him, pointing to reductions in staffing due to AI. The case went to arbitration and then the Chinese court system, which supported a compensation package.
The ruling builds on a precedent set by another Chinese court in December, which found that AI implementation did not meet the necessary legal standard for a mapping company to terminate one of its employees' contracts.
Also at https://archive.ph/6tNRC.
If it didn't say China all over it, I would have guessed this court decision was in Europe(??).
Going back to a hypothetical situation from, say, 20 years ago, does anyone know what happened (in China) to a room full of lathe operators when the company bought a CNC lathe and a robot to load and unload the parts? I certainly don't recall reading about any court decisions supporting the machinists back then, perhaps because the Chinese economy was growing so fast that another job was easy to find?
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