Freelancers Using AI Tools Earn 40% More Per Hour Than Peers, Study Says (axios.com)
- Reference: 0178237538
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/30/1959225/freelancers-using-ai-tools-earn-40-more-per-hour-than-peers-study-says
- Source link: https://www.axios.com/2025/06/30/ai-job-vibe-coding-upwork
The freelance marketplace analyzed over 130 work categories and tracked millions of job posts over six months, finding that generative AI is simultaneously replacing low-complexity, repetitive tasks while creating demand for AI-augmented work. Workers using AI for augmentation outnumber those using it for automation by more than 2 to 1. Freelancers with coding skills comprising at least 25% of their work now earn 11% more for identical jobs compared to November 2022 when ChatGPT launched.
[1] https://www.axios.com/2025/06/30/ai-job-vibe-coding-upwork
looking closely (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look closely at the article it says;
"The increased freelance earnings from AI jobs are typically from people who already had experience in that particular field"
"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,"
So it's a small subset of 'freelancers', and that subset was already working on AI and is comfortable with it. No telling how this applies to the general population.
Re:looking closely (Score:5, Interesting)
I know an online gig worker who does audio transcriptions. He says his workflow is: AI does a first draft of the transcript, then he reads it simultaneously with the audio and makes corrections. (Often that involves researching technical terms and proper nouns.)
The company he works for provides the initial AI transcription. So all their workers are using the AI.
I've done transcriptions of song lyrics manually, and I've also tried it "AI-assisted" by using rough drafts from YouTube's caption generator. I can say that for the task of transcribing speech to text, AI greatly enhances productivity.
Come back in five years (Score:5, Insightful)
And find that "AI" is good for population control, controlling public opinion by flooding, software development, and destroying jobs where nobody cares about the product, like marketing copy, saying "no" to customers and Google search.
Re: (Score:2)
>> Freelancers with coding skills comprising at least 25% of their work now earn 11% more for identical jobs compared to November 2022 when ChatGPT launched.
> So what you're saying is that they're basically keeping up with GDP and using AI has no real benefit.
No, no. They're saying that the people who aren't using AI are getting less work because there are fewer jobs, and the people who are using AI are barely keeping up with inflation compared with the pre-AI world.
AI research company says AI is good (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, even the National Egg Board isn't this biased.
Re: (Score:2)
> Man, even the National Egg Board isn't this biased.
Yet those people are still a bit NEB-ish, aren't they?