DOL Issues AI guidance

On October 16, 2024, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued guidance on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in employment—Artificial Intelligence and Worker Well-Being: Principles and Best Practices for Developers and Employers. The guidance stems from President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14110 on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence issued on October 30, 2023.

Best Practices

The guidance’s best practices provide strategies for how AI can benefit workers and businesses, while maintaining a focus on workers’ rights, job quality, wellbeing, privacy, and economic security. These approaches include the following:

• Centering worker empowerment. Workers and their representatives—especially those from underserved communities—should be informed of and have genuine input in the design, development, testing, training, use, and oversight of AI systems for use in the workplace.
• Ethically developing AI. AI systems should be designed, developed, and trained in a way that protects workers.
• Establishing AI governance and human oversight. Organizations should have clear governance systems, procedures, human oversight, and evaluation processes for AI systems for use in the workplace.
• Ensuring transparency in AI use. Employers should be transparent with workers and job seekers about the AI systems that are being used in the workplace.
• Protecting labor and employment rights. AI systems should not violate or undermine workers’ right to organize, health and safety rights, wage and hour rights, and antidiscrimination and antiretaliation protections.
• Using AI to enable workers. AI systems should assist, complement, and enable workers and improve job quality.
• Supporting workers affected by AI. Employers should support or upskill workers during job transitions related to AI.
• Ensuring responsible use of worker data. Workers’ data collected, used, or created by AI systems should be limited in scope and location, used only to support legitimate business aims, and protected and handled responsibly.

DOL Framework Guides Employers Using AI in Recruiting and Hiring

In addition to the best practices, the DOL put out an AI & Inclusive Hiring Framework on September 24, 2024. Published by the Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology (PEAT), the framework is intended to help employers reduce the risks of creating unintentional forms of discrimination and barriers to accessibility as they implement AI hiring technology.

PEAT’s framework is based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework and includes NIST’s best practices for inclusive hiring. The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) and PEAT developed the framework with input from disability advocates, AI experts, government and industry leaders, and the public at large.

The framework has 10 focus areas, including practices, goals, and sample activities that employers can adopt in their AI governance and disability-inclusive hiring initiatives. Each area has information on maximizing benefits and managing risks for workers and job seekers when an organization assesses, acquires, or deploys an AI hiring technology.

Conclusion

While these DOL documents are not binding, they represent general principles and best practices that can be implemented by employers to help them prepare for when AI legislation is enacted in the future.

Written by the editors of the Federal Employment Law Insider.

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