Proactive Investors - The UK’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) has warned the government that workers are at risk from new uses for artificial intelligence, whilst EU lawmakers have called for a summit of world leaders to help manage the growth of the technology.
The national trade body union, which acts as a mouthpiece for the Labour Party, claimed that AI was being used to make life-changing decisions for employees.
The group pointed to examples in Amsterdam where former Uber (NYSE:UBER) and Ola drivers had accused their employers of using AI to help dismiss them.
Last month, Royal Mail (LON:IDSI) managers were blamed for using devices to track workers to increase productivity.
“These technologies are often spoken about as the future of work,” said Mary Tower at TUC, but warned, “These are existing urgent problems in the workplace, and they have been for some time.”
In the rest of Europe, twelve members of the European Parliament have asked for both Joe Biden and the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to meet will other leaders to help make AI firms more responsible for the technology’s impact.
It follows reports last week that Chinese regulators were planning to tighten measures for technology companies planning to create AI services.
The organisation wants companies to complete security assessments before going public with the technology.
In the US, Biden’s government are listening to the public to help decide whether accountability measures for AI systems need to be put in place.
Elon Musk also weighed in on the issue along with thousands of technology figures, signing an open letter urging a six-month pause for firms developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The Twitter owner was one of the founders of OpenAI and even donated US$10mln in 2016 to the group but resigned from his co-chairman role in 2018.
In Italy, lawmakers are considering lifting its ban on ChatGPT, giving it until the end of April to comply with privacy requirements to be fit for use in the country.