Chinese court awards compensation to fired worker replaced by AI

A court in China has ruled in favor of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation.

The worker, whose last name is Zhou, joined a technology company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 to work as a quality assurance manager and oversee large language models used in AI products.

The company, which was not named publicly, later said AI could do his job and offered him a demotion and a 40% pay cut. When he refused, he was fired from the company.

Zhou appealed his firing, and the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court ruled last month that the company was wrong in firing him and ordered him to pay him 260,000 yuan in compensation.

The case has attracted widespread attention and is an example of how China can balance the country’s enthusiastic adoption of AI with job security, especially at a time of high youth unemployment.

Chinese state media said the ruling sent “a reassuring message to workers’ rights.”