Legislation could shield employees facing an AI threat

A private member's bill in Parliament should initiate a debate on the rights of Indian workers

- VIKRAM KOPPIKAR

In the heels of news of layoffs at an Indian information technology (IT) behemoth that may be attributed to artificial intelligence (AI), a private member's bill to protect employees from the use of AI in the workplace has been presented in the Rajya Sabha by Trinamool Congress member Mausam Noor. This Artificial Intelligence (Protection of Rights of Employees) Bill is narrower in scope than its European counterpart, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which intends to cover AI risks in general. The Indian private member's bill, in contrast, focuses squarely on employee rights in the workplace.

To understand the need for such legislation, look no further than US tech giants. Amazon, for example, has been developing machine learning algorithms since 2014 for warehouse logistics, pricing decisions, etc. One of these works as a recruitment tool by scoring candidates on a scale of one to five stars and then picking the top resume from the hundreds received for every Amazon job. In 2015, the company discovered that its algorithm favored male candidates, as it had been trained on successful resumes of the preceding 10 years, which were mostly of male applicants. The algorithm had 'learnt' that male candidates were preferred. Resumes of women with pursuits such as 'chess' or 'debate' were given an even more unfavorable rating. Although Amazon initially tried to amend its algorithm, it ultimately abandoned the project.