Editor’s note: Workers’ Daily published an article penned by Yang Weiguo, president of Beijing International Studies University, which discusses how artificial intelligence has changed employment and what approaches are adopted to improve employment governance in the AI era. Below are excerpts of the article. The views don’t necessarily represent those of China Daily.
The breakup of jobs in the age of AI means that, driven by AI, the basic unit of the labor market is shifting from positions to discrete work tasks accomplished with the help of various kinds of AI tools.
The labor that fulfills job responsibilities is also split into corresponding skill sets. Every worker possesses multiple skills of different types or proficiency levels, which can be deployed individually or combined to complete different tasks.
AI is also reshaping the foundational components and underlying logic of the employment market. A task-based market is gradually taking shape to match skills with tasks. Labor relations originally structured around worker-job matching are expanding into diverse forms of employment arrangements. For workers, this means they will be able to work in a more flexible way, yet it also creates bigger challenges for protecting labor rights, making reform in labor governance increasingly urgent.
Around the world, three main approaches have emerged to address the challenges AI poses for employment governance.
The first approach taps into traditional methods. Based on existing labor laws, the approach seeks to protect workers’ rights and reduce the risks brought by AI technology through the perspective of traditional and standard labor relations. This approach is able to offer a safety net for workers in the short run, yet it overlooks the irreversible nature of technological progress and may dampen market dynamism.
The second approach is incremental and similar to “sewing patches”, where policymakers fix loopholes discovered in the existing employment governance framework. The approach’s strength lies in its ability to respond rapidly to pressing social demands. Still, it struggles to cope with structural shifts, and may lead to new loopholes in labor protection.
The third is the developmental governance approach. This strategy aims to systematically rebuild and improve employment systems to suit the intelligent economy. Aligned with shifting employment patterns, it delivers holistic institutional design for the protection of labor rights, the creation of job opportunities, the upgrading of workers’ skills, and the innovation of social security and income support systems.
As the intelligent economy expands rapidly, the three approaches currently act as complementary tools in employment governance to energize the task-based labor market and safeguard workers’ rights.
The traditional approach focuses on protecting the basic interests of workers. The “patchwork” approach focuses on meeting urgent needs. The developmental governance approach, on the other hand, focuses on building a sound employment environment in the long run. This final approach should be the direction for the progress of employment governance.