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The employment impacts of AI are increasingly being felt

With robots doing everything from building cars to providing ‘company’, it is predicted that over the next 20 years, 1 in 3 UK jobs will be replaced by a robot. The development of AI and superfast microchips the size of a grain of rice means that a simple formula and fast connection may soon make many thought based roles obsolete.
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Advances in technology have meant that AI plays a much larger part in our daily lives. With robots doing everything from building cars to providing ‘company’, it is predicted that over the next 20 years, 1 in 3 UK jobs will be replaced by a robot. Contributor Enrique Garcia, Employment Law Consultant – the ELAS Group.

The development of AI and superfast microchips the size of a grain of rice means that a simple formula and fast connection may soon make many thought based roles obsolete. Just this week, Amazon opened a supermarket in Seattle with no checkout operators or self-service tills. In fact, other than having someone to check ID if a customer wishes to purchase alcohol, there is no human interaction at all. This is the next step following the widespread introduction of self-check outs where only one person is needed to monitor 20 tills. At the Amazon store the only employees needed are re-stockers and it’s probably only a matter of time until the technology is developed to enable robots to do this as well.

Of course, some human intervention will always be needed e.g. to investigate errors and omissions in the algorithms and re-write codes to fix them, but what do you do with employees when technological advances mean you need fewer people on the workforce? Enrique Garcia is an employment law consultant with the ELAS Group. He says there are serious employment law implications when it comes to replacing people with AI/computers/robots:

“AI is great for businesses as a single cost and maintenance is likely to be cheaper overall than the cost of employing workers, managers, HR etc. who are all entitled to regular and minimum levels of earnings and benefits e.g. National Minimum Wage/National Living wage, pensions, holidays etc. For obvious reasons, robots are not entitled to wages, pensions, holidays etc. so the savings and benefits of replacing a human workforce could be both financial and non-financial. However, from an HR or employment law perspective, it’s not so simple.

“The employees who are being replaced will be being made redundant and, as such, will be entitled to protection from unfair dismissal. This means that a good, solid business case for the move needs to be demonstrated, followed by an open and fair consultation process before any decisions are made. There are special rules regarding the minimum consultation processes if a company is dismissing 20+ employees.

“This consultation will need to include the exploration of other options rather than the replacement and other employment opportunities, being careful not to directly or indirectly discriminate on the grounds of age when exploring alternative opportunities. Technology can often indirectly discriminate against older people who tend to be less confident with newer technology than younger people, who’ve grown up with it. Companies would need to ensure that they have good selection criteria e.g. scoring matrices reflective of the needs of the business, which are tailored by department/role.

“Getting this consultation wrong will prove costly. Unfair dismissal, including unfair redundancy dismissal cases, can result in compensation up to a year’s pay. Any potential discrimination also carries compensation – in the UK the record pay out currently stands at £4.5million. It’s critical to seek advice – from human lawyers – before making any such move in order to reduce the risk of tribunal claims.

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