Dr. Michelle O'Sullivan:

What Senator Sherlock mentioned about the numbers, privacy, and health and safety is correct. Regardless of whether the technology should be used at all as part of monitoring or surveillance of employees, it is particularly important is to consider the stages at which rights kick in. At the moment, many data protection rights might kick in after the fact as opposed to before the thing is developed at all. Some international legislation provides that worker representatives should have a lot of input at the development stage and that no technology should be introduced before they are involved. In the survey, we asked employees about their level of influence over workplace policies on the introduction of technology. Three quarters of respondents said they had no influence at all. Research shows that if people are influencing it, they are more likely to be accepting of technology and technology related to surveillance. That is a big issue as well. The platform economy has a very sophisticated level of algorithm activity. The EU is bringing in a directive on platform work. Some of it is instructive. Part of the directive is about the use of algorithms. Even though it is specific to platform work, some of it is instructive as to how it could be applied in other workplaces as well in terms of the proportionality of AI and so on.