A Chinese court has ordered a tech company to pay more than £28,000 in compensation to a former employee who was illegally fired after being replaced with an AI system. The quality assurance professional, identified only as Zhou, was demoted and forced to take a 40 per cent pay cut after his work at the company in the eastern city of Hangzhou was replaced by AI . When Zhou refused to accept the demotion, he was fired. The company said that it was undergoing organisational restructuring, which reduced staffing needs, and offered Zhou, who had joined the company in 2022, about £33,500 in severance. He refused to take the deal and went to an arbitration panel, which ruled his dismissal “unlawful” and backed his claim for higher compensation. The unnamed company went to a district court but lost. It then appealed to the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court, which again ruled in Zhou’s favour. The court said companies could not terminate employees just to replace them with AI systems.…