UVM researcher calls for workers’ protection from AI

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - Researchers at UVM are looking into how emerging technology influences people, and they’re urging Vermont to be a leader in regulating artificial intelligence.

The automation market is hot, and as companies integrate AI into their systems, the work employees do is being collected with the potential to later automate their jobs.

Juniper Lovato, one of the researchers in the complex systems and data science program, describes it as your work being “mined” for profit, and she’s worried about how this will affect women and minorities. She cites a data analysis from https://layoffs.fyi/ that identified 45% of those laid off in 2022 from tech companies as women, while women only made up 30% of that tech workforce.

“I think it’s gonna be really important to sort of set regulation around inequality and layoffs and to set regulation around who’s getting laid off due to automation, and sort of disclosing that,” said Lovato.

Lovato says she doesn’t know if every job can be automated, but those in the industry are speculating that administrative jobs, those around health care, customer service and artists are those being most heavily impacted right now.

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