What California's No Robo Bosses Act would actually require before an AI can get you fired

This site covered California's three AI employment bills on 16 September, when they went to Governor Newsom's desk. This is what one of them, Senate Bill 947, would actually do. From 1 July 2027 it would stop virtually every public and private employer in the state from relying exclusively on an automated decision system to discipline or fire someone. The bill defines that system broadly: "any computational process derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence that issues simplified output, including a score, classification, or recommendation, that is used to assist or replace human discretionary decisionmaking and materially impacts natural persons." An employer relying "primarily on ADS output" would have to "direct a human to corroborate the decision" using the underlying data or other supporting information - and if that person finds the output "inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading", the employer could not use it at all. The inputs such a system may be asked to weigh are listed: evaluations, personnel files, work product, peer reviews, and interviews with witnesses including the employer's own customers. Workers would gain two rights: a plain description of their own data that fed the system, on request, and a written post-use notice, given when they are told the decision, stating that an ADS was primarily relied on, that a human corroborated it, who to contact, and that asking costs them nothing. In a claim, the worker shows an ADS was used; the burden then shifts to the employer to show either that it was not primarily relied on or that these duties were met. The penalty is $500 per violation. The California Chamber of Commerce and other opponents argue the human guardrail may compromise the neutrality that the best AI is designed for, and could thwart systems that reduce human bias. The account here is by Dan Eaton, a San Diego lawyer who defends and advises employers, which is worth knowing while reading his read of what "primarily" and "materially" will mean in practice - the bill does not define how far short of accurate an output has to fall.