California’s new laws target workers’ biggest fear of AI taking their jobs

AI Summary

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed laws limiting how employers can use AI in workplace decisions and monitoring. The measures prohibit AI-only decisions to fire workers, emotional-state prediction and collection of neural data, and require notice when AI causes layoffs.

The state, which is home to many AI companies, is one of the first to roll out workplace regulations targeting the technology California’s laws aimed at protecting workers from the impacts of artificial intelligence could pave the way for broader workplace safeguards across the US as calls for regulating the technology mount. As the federal government goes hands-off on AI, California is taking the reins to address workers’ biggest fears. On Thursday, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a suite of new laws that ban bosses from relying entirely on AI to decide whether to fire workers, using it to predict employees’ emotional states or collecting neural data, meaning the information from electrical signals of someone’s brain or nerves. They also require companies to notify workers if layoffs were caused by AI and prohibit AI surveillance in workplace bathrooms. Continue reading...