HANGZHOU — The Hangzhou intermediate people's court ruled in favor of a worker named Zhou, ordering a technology company to pay him 260,000 yuan in compensation after it replaced him with artificial intelligence. The court in the eastern Chinese city sided with Zhou after his employer dismissed him for refusing a demotion and a 40% pay cut.

Zhou joined the Hangzhou tech company in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor overseeing large language models used in AI products. The company later said AI could perform his job and offered him a demotion accompanied by the reduced salary. When Zhou refused the terms, the company fired him, and he disputed the dismissal.

In a separate matter, the Beijing local government published details of an arbitration case in which a company fired a woman who had worked as a manual data collector for 15 years because an automated data collection tool could do her job. An arbitration committee ruled that the company could incorporate AI into its business model but that this did not constitute a "significant change in objective circumstances" that could be the legal basis for terminating an employment contract.

Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Chinese policymakers had shifted their public messaging on AI employment. "Previously, Chinese policymakers seemed to downplay these risks. Official messaging on AI focused on the new jobs that AI was creating," Chan said. "Now we see more language from Beijing about addressing unemployment related to AI," he added.

A recent Ipsos survey found that more than 80% of people in China were excited about products that use AI, compared with fewer than 40% in the United Kingdom or the United States. According to the latest data, 17% of people aged 16 to 24 in China were unable to find work.