California lawmakers have passed Assembly Bill 1883, a measure that would prohibit employers from using certain AI-enabled workplace-surveillance tools to “collect neural data or recognize an individual’s emotional state.” The bill is pending before Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Neural data might be a new term for many HR leaders, but in the AI age, this concept has crept into the workplace. If enacted, AB 1883 would target specific uses of AI-enabled surveillance while allowing employers to use workplace-monitoring tools for safety and other purposes when those tools do not engage in the prohibited conduct.
Read more: How the EU AI Act impacts global standards for AI in hiring
The proposal comes as the European Union’s AI Act prohibits AI systems intended to detect the emotional state of people in workplace and education settings, except when the systems are placed on the market strictly for medical or safety reasons. The regulation defines an “emotion-recognition system” as an “AI system for the purpose of identifying or inferring emotions or intentions of natural persons on the basis of their biometric data.”
Danielle Ochs, a San Francisco shareholder at Ogletree Deakins, said the bill comes amid growing concern about workplace surveillance. Specifically, there is an eagle eye on “AI-driven tools that possess potentially intrusive monitoring capabilities,” Ochs said in an exclusive email to HR Executive.
The bill...
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