Good Business Practices or a ‘War on Tech’?: Labor and Employment Lawyers Eye Bill to Rein In Workplace AI
A New York Senate bill that would put the Empire State at the forefront of regulating artificial intelligence in the workplace has a captive audience of employment lawyers ahead of next year’s legislative session.
“A lot of employers are going to have to look at the things that they’re doing in selecting and evaluating their workforce, to see if the tools they’re using are actually effectuating the results that they’re looking for,” Blank Rome labor and employment partner Anthony Mingione said of the potential impact of S7623.
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If enacted, violators of the bill’s provisions could face civil penalties of up to $500 for the first violation and between $500 to $1,500 for each subsequent violation.
In many respects, Mingione said, the bill seeks to codify good business practices.
“A lot of times what we’ve seen is, employers will get a tool off the shelf so to speak to use for evaluating candidates or screening resumes or calling down a large amount of data into a manageable pool of applicants,” the attorney said. “But there may not be testing as to whether the particular tool that employers are using is actually delivering the candidate pool that employers are looking for.”
“And so the idea here is that the bill will motivate people to check and see if the tools are in fact giving a diverse pool of applicants,” he continued. “Are they indeed effectively screening out or screening in good performers or predicting who will be good performers? And that’s something that in a perfect world with infinite resources employers would love to have dialed in their metrics and their tools.”
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"Good Business Practices or a ‘War on Tech’?: Labor and Employment Lawyers Eye Bill to Rein In Workplace AI," by Brian Lee was published in the New York Law Journal on September 22, 2023.