AI and technology in the workplace: UK employment law

Essential points

• There is no single piece of legislation that governs the use of technology in an employment context, and employers should be aware of the principles set out across a patchwork of legislation and case law.
• The UK approach has been to rely on a cross-sector approach to regulation, with existing regulators playing their part.
• Technology is increasingly being used to make decisions that have real and lasting impacts on individuals, but how those decisions were reached may not be immediately obvious to the individual. With AI, it may not even be known to the employer that it's embedded in the technology solution. This poses an obvious legal risk when these systems are prone to the same types of biases that are prevalent in the historic data that the AI has been trained on. 
• Employers also now hold significantly more data regarding their employees and customers, which presents a risk to both.