Uberization of Work vs Competence Development

The uberization of work, meaning the trend toward on-demand work and short-term assignments, is gaining popularity. On one hand, it offers flexibility and the possibility of quick earnings, but on the other, it can lead to employment uncertainty and lack of financial stability. Increasingly, we also observe that this work model may hinder employees’ long-term competence development.

In a world of uberization, there’s no room for traditional career paths or promotions. Instead of deepening knowledge in a specific field, workers are forced into constant “reskilling” - acquiring new skills to meet changing demand. This can lead to superficial competencies and a lack of experts in narrow fields. Moreover, companies lose motivation to invest in employee development since they can simply find someone with the skills needed at the moment.

But the combination of uberization and AI could be an explosive mix, as the company Payman recently demonstrated - a company whose goal is to build a platform where AI hires humans for specific tasks (yes, AI hires humans, not the other way around).

Are you an experienced diagnostician? Payman wants the hospital to fire you, hire an AI diagnostician, and you’ll just consult on the harder cases.

Are you an experienced lawyer? Payman wants your law firm to fire you, hire an AI lawyer, and you’ll just check the correctness of prepared contracts.

Are you an experienced designer? Payman wants your company to fire you, hire an AI designer, and you’ll just give feedback and suggest creative ideas.

I’m very much in favor of integrating AI in the workplace in a way that delegates boring, predictable, and repetitive tasks to algorithms. Integration that leads to uberization - I don’t like that at all.