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 aimed at AI’s use in the workplace include Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois and Texas, narrower in scope than California’s. And more bills across the county are being lined up for consideration, Gonzalez said.
California’s laws aim to target workplace surveillance measures like heat maps that track employees’ movements, including how long they spend in the bathroom, or having their emotional states monitored. Amazon warehouse workers have previously complained about being timed on their bathroom breaks, for example. And at Kaiser Permanente, nurses have said automated systems rated their tone of voice in patient interactions.
But the laws could also prevent future unexpected harms.
“We don’t know all the places companies are using AI, and that is and should be scary,” Gonzalez said.
Part of the strategy for worker advocates and union groups like the California Federation has been following AI companies’ latest products. “If it’s being sold, that’s a good indication” it could be in use, Gonzales said. The federation also plans to use the momentum to revive issues like requiring employers to disclose when they’re using AI in the workplace, which was a bill that died in the state’s assembly appropriations committee this year.
California’s new laws are a key step in gaining regulatory ground for worker advocates, said Robin Feldman, director and founder of AI Law & Innovation Institute at The University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. Still, the statutes are somewhat limited in how they are implemented.
“The bills have no private enforcement,” Feldman said. “In other words: workers can’t sue. Only the government can enforce the laws.”
The new regulations come amid a backdrop of record AI spending at big tech companies along with massive job cuts. But workers have started pushing back. In June, Meta paused a program that tracked workers’ computer activities to train its AI models. And one month later, dozens of employees filed a lawsuit claiming the tech company’s AI tools targeted those with disability accommodations or on medical or parental leaves for layoffs.
Meanwhile, safety concerns, including fears that AI could destroy humanity, have been garnering more attention from lawmakers across the country and prompted OpenAI and Anthropic to call for slowing the pace of development.
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“Workers are increasingly part of that movement, speaking up about the fear of job loss and the dehumanizing experience of being surveilled and controlled by an algorithm,” said Annette Bernhardt, senior tech policy adviser at UC Berkeley Labor Center.
While the new laws “have teeth”, according to Danielle Ochs, shareholder at employment law firm Ogletree Deakins’ San Francisco office, it’s unclear how sweeping the change will be. Ochs said employers generally aren’t grappling with the AI uses outlined in the new regulations and instead are more interested in how to responsibly implement AI across their systems.
“Having 10 hoops you have to jump through per tool is not reflective of reality,” she said. It would be better to have “guardrails that are more aligned” with employers’ wider use of AI rather than focused on specific tools or uses.
She says opponents worry that the new rules could unexpectedly prohibit helpful AI that might, for example, ensure truckers don’t fall asleep at the wheel.
While it’s too soon to gauge how effective the laws will be, worker advocates believe the momentum is moving in a positive direction. Gonzalez said the measures are only the beginning of addressing AI’s potential impacts.
“We have so much work to do,” she said. “But this should give us all hope we can win … against the tech lobby, against big corporations, because we are the majority.”