Dr. Michelle O'Sullivan:

On remote work, for example, one is talking about different types of monitoring. On webcams, for example, there is a long history of decisions from the Data Protection Commission on video surveillance in the workplace. I am not aware of it in terms of remote work.

Regardless of what the system is, a key issue is the legitimacy and the proportionality as to whether the technology is being used for a legitimate purpose but, more than that, it is about proportionality. A lot of international proposals about regulation would say that a key issue is that the employer must show that he or she could not use less intrusive methods. They have to justify why a particular method is being used to record what employees do and if they are using videos, biometrics or whatever, they have to explain why they could not use something less intrusive to achieve the same objective. Proportionality is a key issue there.

In terms of artificial intelligence, in some organisations they do not use it at all. In others, the ones that are putting more money into technology and surveillance might be using it to develop, for example, score cards. In some organisations internationally, there is a level of almost complete automation where some employees in some organisations would, for example, be terminated purely on the basis of an algorithm saying that they have had X number of transgressions. We do not know, but I do not suspect, that level of use is that widespread yet. What we have is more an assistance level of artificial intelligence where it is helping management to make decisions but management are still at present being the key decision-makers. They are using AI to develop data about the level of employees' work, or the quantity or the quality, but at present humans are still making the key decisions or they have the ability to override what AI might be telling them. The potential for that data to be used in the future can go further.