From Algorithm to Law: How Artificial Intelligence Redefines Work and Labour Rights in Peru

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming employment relationships through automation, algorithmic management, automated decision-making, and workplace surveillance. While these technologies offer opportunities for productivity gains and organizational efficiency, they also generate significant challenges for labour law by reshaping traditional forms of managerial control and creating new risks for workers’ fundamental rights. This article examines how AI is redefining work and labour rights in Peru, with particular attention to equality and non-discrimination, privacy, human dignity, job security, freedom of association, collective bargaining and worker participation, and occupational well-being. Using a doctrinal and comparative legal methodology, the study analyses the Peruvian regulatory framework alongside recent European and international labour standards, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act, the Platform Work Directive, and ILO Convention No. 193 concerning decent work in the platform economy. The findings indicate that the principal challenge is not automation itself but the increasing use of algorithmic systems to govern employment relationships through opaque and data-driven decision-making processes. Although Peru has adopted Law No. 31814 and its implementing regulation, which establish general AI-governance rules and classify certain employment uses as high-risk, significant employment-specific procedural gaps remain regarding algorithmic management, contestation, evidentiary access, collective participation, and coordinated labour enforcement. The article argues that future reforms should pursue selective regulatory adaptation through a worker-centred approach combining transparency obligations, meaningful human oversight, targeted algorithmic audits and impact assessments, collective participation mechanisms, and effective enforcement. Ultimately, the study concludes that the transition from algorithm to law requires labour-specific procedural safeguards capable of ensuring that technological innovation remains compatible with fundamental rights, decent work, and social justice in the digital age.