China · The Register
Just in time for Labour Day, China makes it illegal to fire humans if AI takes their jobs
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 outlet. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◌ Single Source
A Chinese court has ruled that it’s illegal to replace human workers with AI.
Key facts
- Last week’s IDR 5.4 billion ($311,000) profit, on revenue of IDR 171 billion ($9.8 billion), was therefore the moment
- Alibaba Cloud scored 37 percent of the $14.7 billion spend, well ahead of Huawei Cloud’s 17 percent share and Tencent Cloud’s ten percent slice of the cake
- Samsung Electronics last week announced Q1 2025 revenue of ₩133.9 trillion ($90.9 billion), its highest-ever quarterly haul
- The State Council shared news of the judgment on April 30
- the day before the annual Labour Day holiday on May 1 that celebrates workers' rights
Summary
China’s State Council, the nation’s highest executive and administrative authority, saw fit to publish a state media report about the case, which saw the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court consider the case of a worker who was hired for duties including “matching user queries with large language models and filtering illegal or privacy-violating content, among others, to ensure accurate output by AI models.” The worker’s employer started using AI for some of that work and offered the employee a demotion and reduced salary. The worker, identified only by their surname Zhou, challenged that decision and won. According to the report shared by the State Council, the case established the legal principle that using AI to perform a worker’s job does not automatically justify terminating a contract.