AI explained: AI in the workplace

As part of our new series on artificial intelligence, in the coming months, we explore the key challenges and opportunities in this rapidly evolving landscape. In this episode, our labor and employment lawyers, Mark Goldstein and Carl de Cicco, discuss what employers need to know about the use of AI in the workplace and the key differences and implications between the UK and the U.S. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, and welcome to Tech Law Talks, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies group. In each episode of this podcast, we will discuss cutting edge issues on technology, data, and the law. We will provide practical observations on a wide variety of technology and data topics to give you quick and actionable tips to address the issues you are dealing with every day.  Mark: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Tech Law Talks podcast. We're starting a new series on artificial intelligence or AI, where the coming months we'll explore the key challenges and opportunities within the rapidly evolving AI landscape. Today, we will focus on AI in the U.S. and U.K. workplaces. My name is Mark Goldstein. I'm a partner in Reed Smith’s Labor and Employment Group, resident in our New York office. And I'm here joined today by my colleague, Carl De Cicco from our London office. And we're going to talk today about some of the U.S. and U.K. Implications for AI as it relates to the workplace. So, Carl, let me kick it over to you. And if you can tell us, you know, from a high level, what do employers in the UK need to know when it comes to AI related issues in the workplace?  Carl: Thank you, Mark. So, yes, my name is Carl. I'm a partner here in the London Employment Group of Reed Smith. And essentially, I think the AI issues to be concerned about in the UK are twofold. The first is how it pertains to day to day activities. And the second is how it relates to kind of management side of things. So look on the type of day-to-day activities point that's hopefully the things that people are starting to see themselves in their own workplace starting to come in so use of particular generative AI programs or models to help generate content and that's obviously increasing the amount of output individuals can have and so on the one hand it's quite good on the other hand thinking about it there might be some issues to look at so for example are people being overly reliant on their AI are they simply putting the request in and whatever is churned out by the AI system is that being submitted as the work product and if so that could be quite concerning because, AI is obviously a very useful tool and is sure to continue improving as time goes on but where we stand right now AI is far from perfect and you can get what are known as hallucinations and this seems to be quite a nice term of art for effectively what are errors so things that are conclusions that are drawn on the basis of information that doesn't exist, or quotations of things that do not exist either. So really, the content that's produced by AI should be seen as something that's collaborative with the worker that's involved in the matter rather than something which AI should be totally responsible for. So see it as a first pass rather than the finished product. You should be checking the product that comes out, not just the things like making sure that sources stack up and the conclusions draw back to the data underneath, but to make sure also that you're not getting to a stage where there might be plagiarization. So AI takes what is available on the internet and that can lead to circumstances where actually somebody somebody's very good work is already out there is simply being reproduced if not word for word substantially that can obviously lead to issues not just for the person who's submitting the work but for the employer who might use that particular piece of generated work for something that they're doing. Other benefits could be things like work allocation so