Artificial Intelligence (Regulation and Employment Rights) Bill

Outline of AI Bill 

The Bill is divided into thirteen Parts, each covering a different aspect of artificial intelligence and employment, with four Schedules which complement these Parts.  There are also Explanatory Notes. 

Part 1: Preliminary  

This part introduces the structure of the Bill. 

Part 2: Core Concepts  

This part of the Bill defines the core concepts that define the remit of the Bill such as ‘artificial intelligence system’, ‘high-risk decision-making’, ‘data’, ‘processing’, ‘emotion recognition technology’, ‘employee’, ‘worker’, ‘jobseeker’ and ‘employer’.   

The decision by an employer or its agent to deploy artificial intelligence systems for ‘high-risk decision-making’ is the trigger for most of the rights and obligations in the Bill.  

‘Decision-making’ means any decision made by an employer or its agent in relation to its employees, workers or jobseekers taken or supported by an artificial intelligence system.  

Decision-making is ‘high-risk’ in relation to a worker, employee, or jobseeker, if it has the capacity or potential to produce legal effects concerning them, or other similarly significant effects. 

The term ‘jobseeker’ is new and covers ‘a person who is actively seeking new employment, whether or not that person is already employed’.  

The definition of ‘employer’ includes an existing employer of a worker or employee and a prospective employer in relation to a jobseeker. 

Part 3: Transparency, Observability, and Explainability  

This Part enacts positive duties on employers and their agents in the employment sphere.  

A new type of assessment called a ‘Workplace AI Risk Assessments’ (WAIRA) is created.   

An employer cannot undertake high-risk decision-making until a WAIRA has risk assessed an artificial intelligence system in relation to health and safety, equality, data protection and human rights. 

There will need to be direct consultation with employees and workers before high-risk decision-making occurs; the WAIRA will be central to that consultation.  

Employees will need to establish and maintain a register of information about the artificial intelligence systems used in high-risk decision-making. 

There will be a right to personalised explanations for a high-risk decisions which are or might reasonably be expected to be detrimental to employees, workers or jobseekers. 

Employees, workers or jobseekers will be entitled to a right to human reconsideration of a high-risk decision.   

Part 4: Prohibition on Detrimental Use of Emotion Recognition Technology 

This part prohibits the use of emotion recognition technology in high-risk decision-making that may be detrimental to a worker, employee or jobseeker.  

Part 5: Prohibition on Discrimination  

Existing rights in the Equality Act 2010 are amended to tailor them to the use of artificial intelligence systems by employers and their agents in relation to employees, workers and jobseekers. 

The amendments include that employees will not be liable for the discriminatory consequences of artificial intelligence systems used by their employers, and employers will need to prove that systems are not discriminatory in order to avoid liability subject to a new audit defence. 

This new audit defence will allow employers and their agents to successfully defend a discrimination claim where they did not create or modify the artificial intelligence system and conducted thorough auditing before deploying it, including introducing careful procedural safeguards.    

Part 6: Health and Wellbeing 

There is a statutory right to disconnect which will be added to the Employment Rights Act 1996. 

Part 7: Dismissal 

This part states that it will be automatically unfair dismissal to dismiss an employee through unfair reliance on high-risk decision-making or as a punishment because an employee has exercised their right to disconnect.  The right to interim relief pending determination of any complaint will also be extended to these scenarios. 

Part 8: Trade Unions 

There are provisions for the fair use of data so that trade unions can be provided with the data collected by employers in relation to their members.    

Existing collective consultation obligations in relation to trade unions are also extended to situations in which an employer is proposing to do high-risk decision-making. 

The consultation must begin at least one month before the high-risk decision-making takes place and must be repeated every 12 months for as long as decision-making continues. 

The consultation must include consultation about the risks to the rights of employees and the measures envisaged to address the risks. 

Part 9: Auditing and Procedural Safeguards  

This section of the Bill sets out the auditing of artificial intelligence systems for discrimination, and the standards which an employer must meet to rely on the auditing defence set out in Part 5.   

Part 10: Regulators and Bodies in the Employment Field and Artificial Intelligence 

This part sets out regulatory obligations concerning artificial intelligence and details the principles that key regulators (identified within Schedule 3) must apply in any context concerning employment and the deployment of artificial intelligence systems.