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

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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.

The new laws come as workers increasingly worry whether AI will take their jobs, lead to discrimination and increase workplace surveillance. Unions, worker advocates and even some lawmakers pushed for the new rules, a regulatory shift for a technology that has largely developed unchecked. California, home to many of the leading companies developing AI, represents one of the first states to roll out a sweeping set of workplace regulations targeting the technology.

“It’s a turning point,” said Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, who’s been helping leaders across the country write regulations. “It’s really the first time we’re seeing California workers showing the country that we don’t have to accept [this].”

Other states that have recently passed individual laws