In its Employment Law Briefing, the Government identified several areas of law in place which could be impacted by the use of AI tools:
Trust and Confidence
There is an implied duty of mutual trust and confidence between employees and their employers, and employers are obligated to explain their decisions and justify that they were made in good faith. This could be difficult when an employer has heavily relied on an AI system to make that decision.
Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 protects employees from discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of protected characteristics, including sex, religion and race, for example. When programming AI, employers will need to ensure that such tools do not exhibit bias to avoid discrimination claims.
Data Protection
The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 place various restrictions on data collection and processing. For example, Article 22(1) of UK GDPR sets out that:
“data subjects shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her”.
The Information Commissioners Office has published its own guidance, which contains advice on how to interpret data protection law as it applies to AI systems and general best practices for data protection-compliant AI.
Employment Rights Act 1996
Under the Employment Rights Act 1996, any employee with over two years of continuous service has the right not to be unfairly dismissed, including in unfair redundancy processes where the role may have been subsumed by AI.
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