The People’s Court in the city of Hangzhou in eastern China ruled last week in favor of a worker of a technology company who was hired in 2022 as a supervisor controlling the outputs of artificial intelligence. Subsequently, however, he was replaced by one of the language models and finally released.
“The reasons for the termination of the employment relationship of the mentioned company did not fall under negative circumstances nor did they meet a legal condition that would make it impossible to continue fulfilling the employment contract,” the server Independent quotes from the statement.
From more detailed information, the worker, known only as Zhou, was hired as a quality assurance supervisor with a monthly salary of approximately 2,691 pounds (about 76,000 crowns). In addition to AI outputs, he also supervised the quality of the content, so that privacy was not violated and it was not illegal content.
After a language model took over his job, Zhou was transferred to another position with a lower salary, about 1614 pounds per month (about 46 thousand crowns). His contract was subsequently terminated after he refused the offered lower position.
Zhou appealed to the arbitration court, which recognized that his dismissal was illegal and supported the claim for higher remuneration. The company, which did not agree with this, appealed to a lower people’s court, which ruled in favor of the dismissed employee. The People’s Court in Hangzhou did the same, to which the company later appealed.
The resulting decision was that the use of artificial intelligence is not an excuse for canceling employment contracts.
Who will AI replace?
According to a World Economic Forum survey from last year, roughly 40% of employers expect to reduce the number of employees in areas where AI can automate necessary tasks.
As it emerged from the analysis prepared by Microsoft last year, the top ten most endangered positions are translators (98% of their work can be done by AI), but also historians, mathematicians and proofreaders (91%). From 85%, artificial intelligence could also “make” the work of writers more efficient.
Out of the full 83%, she could also represent journalistic work. More than half of the work would be handled by editors (78%), announcers and radio DJs (74%), web developers (73%), personal financial advisors (69%), but also archivists (66%) or PR specialists (63%).
