A court in China has ruled that employers cannot use AI as an excuse to fire workers, in a major win for labour rights. The Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court gave the ruling on Tuesday in the favour of a worker at a technology company who was recruited in 2022 to oversee its AI output, but was replaced by a large language model and ultimately fired when he demanded better compensation and position. “The termination grounds cited by the company didn’t fall under negative circumstances such as business downsizing or operational difficulties nor did they meet the legal condition that made it ‘impossible to continue the employment contract,’” the court ruled, according to NPR. According to details of the case published by the court, the worker identified only as Zhou was hired as a quality assurance supervisor with a monthly compensation of 25,000 yuan (£2,691). He was required to monitor output by AI models and filter out illegal or privacy-violating content, Xinhua reported.…