Sponsored feature | Jake Gransbury, solicitor, HCR Hewitsons
The adoption of AI in the workplace is accelerating rapidly and has the potential to transform the way we work. A fundamental question for policy makers is to consider the risks these innovative technologies pose and to what extent new regulation, legislation, or both, is required. This is particularly pertinent as our current employment laws were not originally designed to account for AI.
A key issue – discrimination
One key concern is that the objectivity of decisions made by AI are only as good as the data on which those decisions have been made. This can cause bias to be ‘baked in’ to AI. On the other hand, it is known that humans demonstrate unconscious bias and no matter how hard an individual tries to arrive at an objective decision, bias is, in some cases, inevitable. It is therefore necessary to consider to what extent the risk of bias in AI is greater than human bias, and how to mitigate against those risks.
There is little case law to test employment claims in relation to AI. However, the Manjang v Uber Eats case showed the potential for these types of claims to be brought. This case involved an Uber Eats driver who was claiming indirect race discrimination based on the employer’s facial recognition technology being less accurate with certain races.
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