In 2024, the buy-now-pay-later firm Klarna introduced that it could lower a whole bunch of customer support roles and start utilizing a synthetic intelligence chatbot as a substitute. The transfer was anticipated to avoid wasting the corporate thousands and thousands. However a yr later, after clients complained concerning the degraded high quality of customer support, Klarna started to quietly recruit human customer support brokers again.
At first look, the reversal gave the impression to be a victory for human employees within the age of AI. The truth was extra advanced. As an alternative of bringing on full-time customer support brokers, who Klarna contracts by an out of doors company, it as a substitute introduced on employees in what Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has described as “an Uber sort of set-up”. Now, an AI chatbot continues to deal with most of consumers’ primary queries, whereas a rising variety of gig employees deal with the extra superior ones. “Similar to any person can go and drive an Uber for some time, they’ll truly bounce on and work for Klarna’s customer support,” Siemiatkowski mentioned on a podcast in February.
Contemplate this a glimpse into one of many methods synthetic intelligence is poised to remodel work. Whereas labor economists stay divided on how a lot AI will change jobs, they’re roughly aligned on the concept AI will change some elements of most jobs. The optimistic interpretation of that is that AI will tackle extra of the menial duties from human employees, releasing them as much as do higher-level work. The cynical interpretation? As firms more and more combine AI, they may use it to rent fewer full-time workers, shifting towards a fragmented workforce that resembles the gig economic system.
“Gig work” refers to versatile, short-term or on-demand work. The time period initially comes from the music trade, like a band enjoying a “gig”. It’s now generally used to explain employees on platforms like Uber, DoorDash or Taskrabbit. These jobs give employees some autonomy to decide on when and the way a lot to work, however in addition they lack a lot of the advantages afforded to full-time employees: paid break day, medical insurance, employees’ compensation, additional time or perhaps a minimal wage.
“One of many issues we speak about as sociologists who research work is this concept about work shifting from the profession to the job to the gig. And AI makes it even simpler to try this,” says Alexandrea Ravenelle, a sociologist on the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and creator of Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving within the Sharing Financial system. For the final decade, gig work was primarily seen because the area of rideshare drivers and couriers. However now, many industries are discovering that if they’ll outsource some elements of a job to expertise, they’ll lower down on the price of employees by hiring extra employees as contractors quite than full-time, benefited workers.
This transformation is hitting white-collar desk employees hardest as firms try to indicate effectivity good points from adopting AI. “There’s no proof that jobs go away, however there’s lots of proof that as quickly as you’ll be able to dismantle full-time employment, firms will try this,” says Mary Grey, a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Analysis and the creator of Ghost Work: Methods to Cease Silicon Valley from Constructing a New World Underclass. Grey says expertise can allow this transformation, however firms primarily do it to avoid wasting prices.
“We’re going to see it in each trade,” says Ravenelle. “I don’t consider there’s any trade that’s secure from this.”
‘So many roles might be ‘gigified’’
Fifteen years in the past, gig firms like Uber, DoorDash and Instacart seduced employees with tantalizing guarantees round freedom and suppleness. These platforms supplied on-demand jobs to anybody with a automotive and a few free time. Employees had been informed they might grow to be their very own bosses, set their very own schedules, and generally, earn extra money than they might in different jobs.
The truth, after all, turned out to be radically completely different. Hundreds of thousands of platform employees around the globe have now discovered themselves in precarious preparations with unstable pay, unpredictable hours and nonexistent protections. A current report from Human Rights Watch particulars these penalties on a world scale, noting how gig work has stripped employees of primary employee protections like a minimal wage, employees compensation, paid sick go away, or management over their hours – all whereas returning document earnings to companies. And whereas employees are informed they’re their very own bosses, platforms exert immense management over their work, together with utilizing algorithms to assign duties, set pay charges and consider work efficiency.
A number of supply employees within the Human Rights Watch report described entering into automotive accidents and having to foot their medical payments as a result of that they had no entry to employees’ compensation, a typical recourse for injured full-time workers within the US. Others described lengthy, unpaid hours spent ready to select up clients or orders, estimating that as much as half of the time they spent working went unpaid.
Lena Simet, the senior adviser on financial justice at Human Rights Watch who co-authored that report, says these ought to be warnings to the remainder of the workforce. “What we’re seeing in gig work is in some methods the primary indication of one thing broader,” she says. “So many roles might be ‘gigified’. I completely see this as a foreshadowing of what we may even see in lots of elements of the labor market.”
Some information means that this future has already arrived: a current survey from Upwork discovered that about 60 million Individuals, or 39% of the workforce, already carry out freelance or gig work both full-or part-time. That quantity is anticipated to leap to 86 million – about half of the workforce – by 2027, in line with Statista, a world information intelligence platform. The most important and fastest-growing phase just isn’t rideshare drivers or supply couriers, however information employees: customer support brokers, copywriters, monetary analysts, paralegals, writers and coders.
As soon as employees are categorized as contractors, quite than workers, “you might have the rolling again of generations of hard-won office protections,” says Ravenelle. “Actually stuff that our great-grandparents died for, all of these protections are gone.”
When gig work is the one choice
An growing variety of employees at the moment are discovering themselves in any such association, generally because of firms adopting AI. Final month, Ravenelle printed a research taking a look at this shift amongst employees in inventive fields, corresponding to actors, writers, photographers, dancers, musicians, producers and costume designers. A few of these inventive professionals mentioned they felt insulated from the AI increase as a result of they believed their work was too advanced for a big language mannequin, or as a result of their work required cultural judgment. However many others had been already being pressured into work as “employed weapons”, together with work that concerned coaching AI methods.
One musician from Ravenelle’s research had taken on probably the most profitable function she might discover within the present market: working as an “algorithmic composer”, manufacturing primary musical loops and beats to coach the very AI methods designed to switch human musicians. One other employee, a author, had taken a short-term gig evaluating AI-generated writing from a serious expertise firm. When requested if he frightened concerning the existential irony of coaching the software program that might in all probability change him and his friends, the author replied: “That is one of the best alternative proper now for me. And if you happen to can consider one thing higher, let me know.”
One other employee within the research, an actor, described taking a gig with a streaming leisure large that he was informed would ultimately cut back or eradicate the necessity for background actors and extras in TV and movie. The actor was morally conflicted about taking up work that would explicitly take work away from different folks: “I really feel like the development employee laying the bricks for the gasoline chambers,” he mentioned. However with out different choices, he felt he had no various: “Not solely is AI taking up the world, however I’m additionally dust poor, so I’ll as properly simply associate with it.”
Employees typically be part of the gig economic system as a result of it presents one of the best or most profitable choice in an in any other case precarious labor market. Certainly, this was the unique promise of the gig economic system: when nobody else is hiring, you’ll be able to at all times drive for Uber. In a labor market upended by AI, individuals are turning to gig jobs as soon as once more. Mercor, an information coaching AI startup, employed over 30,000 contractors in 2025 to carry out coaching duties for the biggest AI firms. These contractors embrace extremely credentialed employees, like medical doctors, legal professionals and bankers, who can earn excessive hourly charges to enhance AI.
Nurses, too, are dealing with elevated “gigification”. Over the previous few years, some hospital networks have outsourced elements of their core workforces to AI-powered labor platforms like ShiftMed, CareRev and Clipboard Well being. These platforms have been described as “Uber for nursing”, with a gross sales pitch that mirrors the early days of the platform economic system: obtain an app, get pleasure from versatile hours, bid on open shifts, be your personal boss. The truth has confirmed fairly completely different. Nurses on these platforms report working for decrease wages, competing for shifts and having to convey tools that might usually be paid for by an employer, like stethoscopes and thermometers. But one nurse, who was cited in a report about these platforms, described engaged on them as her most suitable choice: “I’ve no selection.”
Like Uber, these platforms have sought exemption from insurance policies that might regulate them in lots of states, they’ve been profitable. At the very least 17 states now acknowledge gig nursing platforms as “healthcare employee platforms” quite than staffing companies, exempting them from lots of the rules that defend employees, and leaving much less pay and fewer employee protections. Many of those “Uber for nursing” platforms have reached billion-dollar valuations.
A narrowing window of alternative to push again
Some teams of employees have responded to this shift within the economic system by utilizing one of many solely levers employees have: unionization. In March, healthcare employees in California went on strike, protesting towards Kaiser Permanente’s use of AI and elevating considerations round outsourcing sure elements of the job to expertise. In Could, IT employees on the College of California voted to unionize, citing considerations round layoffs and pushing for extra management over how they’d use AI of their jobs. Max Belasco, a enterprise methods analyst on the College of California, Los Angeles, who’s a part of that unionization effort, says considerations about AI had been “a serious part of why we determined to prepare”. He added that a lot of the college’s IT employees aren’t towards AI or different expertise, however wished to see the college implement it strategically, and never merely “as a cost-cutting measure”.
However to make sure the best employee protections, employees will want extra complete coverage on the state, federal and worldwide degree. Grey says this might take the type of offering “primary advantages” to everybody no matter work, corresponding to common healthcare or common primary revenue. Different coverage concepts give attention to formalizing protections for impartial contractors and gig employees, corresponding to a world treaty from the United Nations’ Worldwide Labour Group that’s now below dialogue, which might set up requirements round wages and office security.
Simet, the Human Rights Watch adviser, believes this might be a promising step towards establishing higher employee protections. However, she cautions that now’s the time to move better coverage protections earlier than it’s too late. She believes governments have been too cautious to implement such measures, catering as a substitute to firms’ claims that they can not function with better employee protections. “It’s nonetheless a really profitable labor mannequin even when it’s a must to adjust to some rules,” Simet says. “And if this enterprise mannequin can solely persist when exploiting employees, then perhaps it shouldn’t exist.”
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