Freelancers and LLMs: Expertise, judgement and trust

Reading: The more commodified your job, the more likely AI can do it – lessons from online freelancing, The Conversation, 9 April 2026.

Upwork is one of the online freelancer marketplaces. They’ve reported that ChatGPT has resulted in a decrease in low-value work, and an increase in demand for high-value work (contracts above $1000):

Uploaded image — Figure 2 from the Upwork report.

Overall, they say “generative AI has increased the total number of job posts and the average spend per new contract created.” I’m half joking when I wonder how much of the new demand is LLM agents needing humans.

The take-away from this, reported in The Conversation, is:

These workers [who sell a complex bundle of expertise] can use AI to automate the repetitive parts of their jobs while concentrating on the aspects that clients still value most: expertise, judgment and trust.

The human touch and experience, in other words.

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