Work marketplace Upwork is introducing its first “mindful artificial intelligence” solution that it believes will power the future of work on the platform.
The AI, called Uma, is built for both freelancers and employers alike. Initially it can handle a handful of tasks. Job posters, for example, can use Uma to formulate a proposal that best describes a project they need to staff. On the flip side, the AI helps understand whether a freelancer’s skillset matches an available job.
It also is meant to cut down on the length of time and effort needed to post jobs.
“Historically on Upwork people had to create quite extensive documents in order to be able to describe what the work is in order to be able to find the right talent to get the work done,” Andrew Rabinovich, head of AI & machine learning at Upwork, tells Fast Company. “With the existing AI approaches, the client can simply say, ‘I’m looking to build a website,’ and that’s enough to start preparing the the project plan and getting relevant freelancers across the board.”
Upwork hopes Uma can eventually serve as a constant companion that supports customers while on the site. The company released a broader AI manifesto, written by Rabinovich, alongside the Uma announcement. The “mindful” approach, Rabinovich said, means that it’s developed with Upwork’s AI principles in mind. Those including being human-centered, accountable, responsible, transparent, and trustworthy. Enterprise companies have been leaning heavily into the AI craze amid high consumer and investor interest ever since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“The trajectory of AI is undeniably intertwined with the future of work. If, together, we’re going to reimagine a brighter future of work and progress into solving the world’s most significant societal problems with AI, developing and leveraging mindful AI is non-negotiable,” he wrote.
Upwork’s hope is that the AI will one day save people from time-consuming tasks. Instead of taking a long time on one thing, they can focus on larger projects or higher-level work. For example, for freelancers, instead of taking a week to translate one document into another language, the worker can use Uma to translate ten documents and act instead as an editor of its output.
The news was part of the company’s spring product release, which also included new resources for freelancers and enterprise client updates.
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