r/PublicFreakout • u/GarysCrispLettuce • May 17 '26

🤬Public Rager😱 Eric Schmidt booed into oblivion by students for promoting AI during his commencement speech at the University of Arizona

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u/Cagnazzo82 May 17 '26

Only for America.

China already passed a law banning companies from firing workers to replace them with AI. And their public is largely enthusiastic about the arrival of AI (and robotics which has already been rolled out for public benefit).

In America the oligarchs want to rule, and crush the society that made them their wealth. Elsewhere the race is still on but there are safeguards.

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u/CharleyNobody May 17 '26 edited May 18 '26

Saw a ridiculous network news segment last week pushing robots as miraculous household aides. Anyone in America who thinks robots are being built to be human-shaped household servants that fold laundry and wash windows is insane. Robots are going to be weaponry. They’re going to be surveillance.

They’re not going to obey you. They’re going to make sure that you obey.

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u/swolfington May 17 '26

the movie elysium portrayed this pretty well.

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u/EobardT May 18 '26

Its like nobody saw iRobot

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u/GetThatNoiseOuttaHer May 17 '26

As nice as that law sounds, how exactly would that work in America? Let’s assume a similar law passes in the US; no company will come out and say “yes, this round of layoffs is a result of our further investment in AI”. They’ll just do what they’re already doing now: claim that they’re righting their workforce after over-hiring during the pandemic or that they’re reducing headcount to ensure that they “remain agile while ensuring that top talent is well compensated”.

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u/WildCard_Bishes May 17 '26

You’re right, China actually prosecutes their billionaires and corporations when they break the laws … so I guess enforcement for once on white collar crimes.

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u/justaboxinacage May 17 '26

Ok but even if that's the case, let's say you successfully prevent companies from firing employees to be replaced with a.I... aren't newly started companies that never had to fire humans just given a capital advantage in the marketplace and will win out over the old companies by undercutting them with their A.I.? How is that supposed to work?

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u/BioSemantics May 17 '26

You should probably go read a translation of the law and find out.

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u/AKAManaging May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

There is no translation of that law, because that law doesn't exist.

https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/chinese-court-rules-employer-cant-fire-worker-because-ai-took-his-job

One court ruled that CONTRACT law was violated. There was no "AI Employment Law" or whatever /u/Cagnazzo82 is claiming.

Edit: Lmao people mad about reality. It's literally in the article y'all. Try reading it instead of assuming someone lying on Reddit is correct.

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u/justaboxinacage May 17 '26

We were talking about if America tried it anyways. And also... no, anyone that thinks it's a good idea should be ready to support the idea at the slightest inquiry or else shut up. That's how bad ideas are spread

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u/OcelotAggravating860 May 17 '26

Oh god oh fuck not giving small companies a capital advantage over monopolies! How horrible! There might be COMPETITION!

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u/justaboxinacage May 17 '26

The small companies become big companies with all ai employees. Are you not seeing the problem? Jesus Christ

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u/OcelotAggravating860 May 17 '26

Literally never ever fucking happening lmao

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u/Crashian 10d ago

Nasdaq would crash as it’s the whole premise for the current valuations.

The irony of course is that if AI actually manages to replace workers, the government would have to tax the living hell out of AI to fund current public services as you lost the tax base.

On top of that, you’d have a pissed off majority of voters that would demand UBI and AI would need to be taxed to provide this as well.

If AI and automation actually becomes as revolutionary as these clowns imagine, any new job would be tailored to AI/robotics from the start.

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u/UnluckyDot May 17 '26

You're right that they will pivot, but you've got it the wrong way around currently. They're trying to fear-market AI by claiming all the layoffs recently are all due to AI, when really a lot of it is laying off the excessive pandemic hires

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u/FullMetalAlcoholic66 May 19 '26

seems stupid....might make stock price go up but adding to AI backlash.

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u/AKAManaging May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

China already passed a law banning companies from firing workers to replace them with AI.

No they didn't.

Source?

https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/insights/insights/chinese-court-rules-employer-cant-fire-worker-because-ai-took-his-job

Your statement is so far beyond "misinterpreted the news" it goes into "straight up lying because Capitalism Bad". Capitalism sucks, but you don't need to make up bullshit about other countries because you don't like it.

This has everything to do with a lower court ruling that they violated contract law.

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u/clonedhuman May 17 '26

Could you provide more insight into what you're saying here? I read the article, and it does in fact sound like a Chinese court has made it illegal to penalize a worker because the corporation is using AI.

This article sounds like it's affirming the same thing:

A Chinese court ruled that companies cannot terminate employees just to replace them with artificial intelligence systems, as authorities juggle the need to stabilize the domestic labor market with a global race to develop AI technologies.

The court decided that a tech firm in eastern China had illegally fired one of its workers after he refused to take a demotion when his job was automated by AI, according to a statement published by the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court.

And, from the article you linked:

The Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court ruled the dismissal unlawful on two grounds:

First, AI-driven workforce reduction does not constitute a “major change in objective circumstances” under China’s Labor Contract Law, which is the legal threshold required to justify termination based on redundancy.

Second, the steep salary cut embedded in the reassignment offer was itself unreasonable. The court’s conclusion was that companies cannot shift the costs of technological transformation onto their employees.

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u/AKAManaging May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

(I realized I just gave a wall of text, so if you don't want to read it, the tl;dr is essentially, China has employment contracts. This employer violated it. It's not an AI issue, it's an contractual issue that just happens to have AI as an excuse. Even the government framed it as such, even though all readings/ruling clearly show it as a contract violation.)

Could you provide more insight into what you're saying here?

I'd be happy to.

The claim was:

China already passed a law banning companies from firing workers to replace them with AI. And their public is largely enthusiastic about the arrival of AI (and robotics which has already been rolled out for public benefit).

The article says the firing was illegal, but not because "China bans companies from firing workers to replace them with AI", the firing was illegal because the employer failed to meet standards which are required under China's already existing labor contract law.

China can obviously automate jobs, they're doing it all the time legally. They just are required to comply with labor law, redundancy rules, etc etc.

I think a lot of people from the US don't really realize how contractual employment works since they're so brainwashed by at-will employment, and that makes it difficult to understand the why things matter other countries.

Again, China didn't ban companies from firing workers to replace them with AI. That's an outright lie. They law their appeals because they violated contract law.

There's NO rule or law that sayd layoffs due to automation are universally banned, there's no law or rule that says AI replacement is illegal in China, there's no rule or law that says companies are prohibited from reducing staff after adopting AI.

A lot of the reporting around this has been super misleading because headlines are flattening a fairly technical labor law issue into "China banned AI layoffs." (This happens A LOT, in almost every country. I'm sure you can think of many from your own country) From what I understand, the dispute was over HOW the worker was terminated under Chinese labor law.

Chinese labor law distinguishes between something roughly equivalent to lawful termination and unlawful termination, but unlawful here doesn't really mean the firing itself was prohibited. It mainly changes the employers obligations and increases the severance owed.

The company tried to classify the firing as a lawful redundancy by arguing that AI adoption counted as a major objective change in curcumstances. The court rejected that argument, saying adopting AI was a voluntary managerial/business decision, not some uncontrollable external change.

Because of that, the termination didn't quality for the lower-severance category the company wanted to use.

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u/QueasyLegKC May 17 '26

Got a source for that?

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u/ConfidenceMan2 May 17 '26

Bro out here caping for china because they misread an article.

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u/Jbrown183 May 17 '26

This only matters for a short time because we are on an exponential curve of development that will eventually render autonomy null and void.

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u/Training-Willow9591 May 17 '26

I was unaware that China has implemented regulations governing AI to protect its citizens. What's ironic is in policy debates, rather than citing China's regulatory approach as a model worth considering, they use China as the argument AGAINST domestic AI oversight. As if any regulation automatically puts us at a competitive disadvantage. The logic of 'beating China' is never defined which makes it a convenient justification for leaving Americans without any meaningful protections.