BEIJING — Economics graduate Elowen Wu is no rookie when it comes to artificial intelligence, but this summer, she felt like one.
Throughout her studies, Wu used chatbots to organize articles, generate outlines for homework assignments, and even write code.
Then in June, Wu got an internship at an AI startup in eastern China's Anhui province. Suddenly, she felt her AI skills were close to zero.
"It was a huge shock for me because I didn't know how advanced AI was already and how powerful some of its functions are," she said. "I felt very afraid."
She has been documenting her anxiety on the social media platform Xiaohongshu.
"Will I be replaced by AI?" she wrote in one post.
There is a similar concern in the U.S. However, firms in China are adopting AI at a scale that far outpaces those in America, and the push is coming from the country's top leaders.
In recent months, courts and arbitration panels in several Chinese cities have sided with employees displaced by AI — in rulings hailed as a victory for workers' rights.
A court in southern China's Guangzhou city in June published the case of a graphics designer, identified only as a man surnamed Wei. He had been working at a tech company for over three years when AI took over his work. The company, which the court did not name, dismissed Wei and paid 41,000 yuan ($6,000) in severance, citing "major changes in objective circumstances."
The Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court upheld a lower court ruling that this was an illegal dismissal and ordered the company to pay Wei an extra 35,000 yuan ($5,200).
"Employers cannot shift the risks associated with normal technological updates onto employees," Judge Chen Shiyuan noted in her judgment.
She added that companies should offer affected employees other positions or training before terminating a labor contract.
Similar decisions have happened in other major cities.
"Legal protection is necessary," Wu said, but she thinks it will take some time to get it right.
Other countries are paying attention to China's experience, according to Guang Li at the global law firm Taylor Wessing's Munich office. He specializes in Chinese employment and labor laws.
He wrote about an arbitration case last year where another worker, this time in Beijing, was laid off because of AI. It garnered queries from his colleagues in Germany, the Netherlands, France and the U.K.
"They are experiencing more and more similar cases" in those countries, Li said.
Overall, China's laws are very protective of workers.
"If you compare to Germany, to Europe, to the U.S., to some extent, it is even more protective for employees," Li said.
The issue is enforcement.
"The state does not have the capacity or, frankly, the interest to rigorously enforce its own laws," Eli Friedman, a professor of global labor and work at Cornell University, said.
He said Chinese workers are vulnerable.
For example, a tech worker displaced by AI in Hangzhou won his case against his employer earlier this year.
However, the worker is 35, which is considered too old for many tech companies.
"To be put out of your job at that particular time could have felt like a real existential crisis for this person," Friedman said.
And China's economy is sluggish, so employers are looking to cut costs – like wages.
Nearly one in six youths aged 16 to 24 couldn't find a job in June.
"China's job market is very competitive," Wu said. "Many talented people, who are college grads like me, are competing for a limited number of positions."
Wu said AI just intensifies that competition.
It is expected to get worse as China and the U.S. are locked in an AI race.
"You can't say that we want to dominate these industries in the future and then, you know, start clutching your pearls when people use those things to replace workers," Friedman said.
Meanwhile, Wu is continuing to pursue a master's degree and is not looking for work just yet.
Still, every day she is listening to a podcast or watching a video related to AI to keep on top of the latest.
"Keep learning. We tend to fear the unknown," she said, adding that experiencing AI and learning its limitations might make it less scary.
"Otherwise … you might be left behind."
Jasmine Ling contributed to this report.
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