China issues guidelines to promote employment amid AI advances

BEIJING -- China has rolled out guidelines on adapting to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) to promote employment-friendly development, aiming to harness the technology to create jobs, improve employment quality and stimulate entrepreneurship while mitigating job displacement caused by AI applications.

The guidelines, issued by the General Office of the State Council, set out 18 tasks in six areas, including boosting AI's job-creation potential, making AI adoption more employment-friendly, improving workers' digital skills, enhancing employment services, strengthening labor and social security protections, and monitoring and addressing employment risks.

The guidelines call for expanding employment opportunities in emerging fields, helping micro, small and medium-sized enterprises stabilize and expand employment, fostering new forms of employment and entrepreneurship in the AI sector, and developing new AI-related occupations.

The guidelines urge efforts to tap AI's job-creation potential in traditional sectors, mitigate job displacement caused by AI applications, and establish a mechanism to assess employment risks associated with AI adoption.

The guidelines emphasize improving the framework for protecting workers' rights in human-machine collaboration, strengthening social security for people in flexible employment and those in new forms of employment, and refining income distribution mechanisms to adapt to advances in AI.