Trenton Is Finally Writing Rules for the Robot Looking Over Your Shoulder at Work

VOORHEES — Picture a warehouse off Route 73, the kind where half of South Jersey’s daytime economy actually happens. Now picture the software that tracks how long each worker takes to pick an order, flags the ones who slow down, and quietly builds a case nobody ever gets to read. That software exists. It’s running right now. And almost nothing in New Jersey law says it has to tell you it is there.

That’s starting to change, and it’s worth understanding why — because the fight in Trenton over artificial intelligence is not really about robots. It’s about the guy in the warehouse, the teacher whose district just bought an AI grading tool, the Camden County call-center worker whose keystrokes are being counted. It’s about us.

What moved in Trenton

Here’s what moved. A New Jersey Senate panel unanimously advanced legislation that would set rules for the automated systems employers use to hire, evaluate and fire people, require 60 days’ notice before an employer adopts AI that significantly changes a job, and sharply limit electronic monitoring of workers — both on the clock and off it. Unanimous, in a state as politically divided as any. That tells you the discomfort with workplace surveillance cuts across the usual lines. Nobody on either side wants to explain to a constituent why their boss gets to watch them at the dinner table.

A separate Senate bill filed this session goes further: a fund to pay for retraining workers and for the renewable energy that AI’s enormous data centers devour — paid for by a 5% assessment on the gross revenue of large AI computing operations. Make the industry that’s automating the jobs help foot the bill for the people it displaces, and for the power grid it’s straining. Whether that survives the lobbying is another question. But the idea is on the table.

The engine and the seatbelt

All of this lands on top of a state that is going all-in on the technology at the same time it’s trying to fence it. In January, in his last major announcement as governor, Phil Murphy signed a pact with NVIDIA and the state’s colleges and universities to build a statewide AI supercomputer, and the state’s AI hub now runs its own startup accelerator. The Office of the Secretary of Higher Education even has grant money out the door, with applications due October 30. New Jersey wants to build the engine and write the seatbelt laws in the same breath.

Where I come down

I’ll tell you where I come down, because you can usually guess a tech columnist’s priors and I’d rather just say mine. I’m not afraid of the technology. I’ve watched it help a local mechanic diagnose a car in minutes and watched it teach a 78-year-old in Voorhees to video-call her grandkids. The tool is not the enemy. The absence of rules is the enemy — because without them, the warehouse software gets to watch and the worker doesn’t even get to know. Notice and transparency aren’t anti-innovation. They’re the thing that lets a reasonable person trust the innovation at all.

But for the first time, the person being measured by the machine might get a say in whether the machine is allowed in the room.Ethan Brooks

The bills still have a long way to go. Business groups are already calling the workplace bill’s standards vague, and a 5% levy on AI revenue will draw a bigger fight. But for the first time, the person being measured by the machine might get a say in whether the machine is allowed in the room. For South Jersey’s working people, that’s not a small thing. That’s the whole thing.

Based on reporting from New Jersey Monitor, ROI-NJ, Government Technology, Government Market News, and NJBIZ.