Exclusive: AI job substitution is real, but narrow, per new study

The big picture: Uncertainty around AI's impact and abilities means companies are hesitant to hire full-time knowledge workers.

• Upwork says its platform data offers early indicators of future in-demand skills for both freelancers and full-time employees.

By the numbers: Freelance earnings from AI jobs are up 25% year over year, per the report.

• Freelancers in AI earn over 40% more per hour than those doing non-AI work.

What they're saying: The increased freelance earnings from AI jobs are typically from people who already had experience in that particular field, Kelly Monahan, managing director of the Upwork Research Institute, tells Axios.

• "If you were a traditional machine learning expert, and now you're augmenting that work with generative AI, you're seeing such a great premium," Monahan says.
• The same is true for graphic designers who use AI image or video generation tools, she adds.

Between the lines: Most business leaders still don't trust AI to automate tasks without a human in the loop, so they're keen on anyone who knows how to use AI to augment their work.

• Upwork data also showed that managers still trust humans working alone and humans working with AI over AI-only outputs. And that trust gap is widening.
• Workers using AI for augmentation outnumber those using it for automation by more than 2 to 1, a trend that matches data that Anthropic released in February.

Demand for repetitive coding has dipped, but the report shows clients are still looking for experienced developers for more complex projects.

• Freelancers with jobs requiring coding skills for at least 25% of their work now earn 11% more for the same jobs compared with November 2022, when ChatGPT launched, per Upwork.
• The data also suggests that the rise of vibe coding — using AI to code without knowing how to code — is creating demand for more workers who are skilled at using vibe coding tools.
• This is giving rise to what Upwork calls "the generalist," which is anyone who can work with AI to code and design.

What they did: Upwork used its proprietary platform data to evaluate more than 130 categories of work and 62 narrow job categories within broader job fields like "design & creative" or "sales & marketing."

• Researchers tracked the full life cycle of tasks and jobs with the Upwork marketplace over the last six months.

• The company says its dataset includes "millions of job posts" and "billions of dollars in freelance earnings," tracking how job types changed based on when contracts started and how much a freelancer earned.

Yes, but: AI adoption in the workplace has had a rocky start, with executives pushing for it and workers pushing back.

• Many employees still don't understand company policy and are using their own AI tools in secret.
• A Duke University study published last month found that workers who use genAI "face negative judgments about their competence and motivation from others."

Zoom out: Anthropic on Friday launched a program to study how its tools and others are changing the way we work.

• The Economic Futures Program will provide research grants, work with policymakers and track AI's economic impact and usage trends over time.
• "There's no shortage of opinions about AI's economic outcomes," Anthropic wrote in its announcement. "We believe it's fundamental to ground these conversations in real-world data."
• Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei told Axios last month that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10%-20% in the next one to five years.

The bottom line: AI is already replacing some jobs, but it's also expanding other kinds of work that humans can do with it.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Kelly Monahan is the managing director (not manager) of the Upwork Research Institute.