DOL Sets Principles for AI in the Workplace

Author: Robert S. Teachout, Brightmine Legal Editor

October 18, 2024

The Department of Labor (DOL) has released guidance on best practices for using artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. The "roadmap" is intended to ensure AI is implemented responsibly and ethically so as to enhance workers' job quality and safeguard their rights and well-being. 

Artificial Intelligence and Worker Well-being: Principles and Best Practices for Developers and Employers was developed in response to President Biden's Executive Order calling for a coordinated approach to regulating the use of AI, including in employment. The DOL intends for the document to mitigate AI's potential harms to workers' well-being while maximizing its potential benefits. 

Key principles in the roadmap include:

  • Ethically developing AI standards, reviewing processes and establishing governance structures; and
  • Ensuring that AI systems do not undermine or violate workers' labor and employment rights to organize, to health and safety, to wage and hour protections, and to discrimination and retaliation protections.

The use of AI and automation to replace workers was a key issue leading longshoremen and port workers to engage in a strike earlier this month.

The other principles in the DOL guidance are:

  • Ensuring meaningful human oversight for significant employment decisions;
  • Being transparent with workers about the use of AI and identifying how AI can assist workers;
  • Centering workers and their input on the use of AI in the workplace;
  • Providing AI training for workers; and
  • Securing and protecting worker data.

In her introduction to the guidance, Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su noted that human agency will determine how AI is used, for whose benefit and to what ends. "The Department of Labor will remain vigilant in protecting workers from the potential harms of AI, while at the same time recognizing that this is a moment of tremendous opportunity," Su said. "Whether AI in the workplace creates harm for workers and deepens inequality or supports workers and unleashes expansive opportunity depends (in large part) on the decisions we make."