Industry 4.0 has already passed the starting line and AI has started taking over human’s place in some work sectors. That’s the truth. It is said that the service sector and industrial sector are the most heavily affected sectors. Jobs in factories, related to assembly lines, or in banks where some works are repetitive and based on sets of rules which require no human judgement. Or even jobs like barista or chef, recent news show that labs and universities are working on various kinds of AI that can do human jobs efficiently and that corporations are more than willing to replace human workforce with robots, AI to cut costs.
But the real thing we should care about here is whether if it would affect the freelancing world. The exact answer is yet to be known but I would give it a Yes and would like to make an analysis of how Industry 4.0 could affect the world of freelancers.
As more and more human jobs in some sectors are going to be taken over by AI, more and more people will be in need of new work opportunities, will seek alternative sources of income, and, we can say that, doing freelance jobs using online platforms is a viable solution.
Why? Because it requires little to no transportation, people can work online conveniently from their home. Some may try to argue by saying that it’s unlikely the case as people can’t do jobs they don’t have skills for. But then there are always simple freelance jobs and more than that, they can start studying, acquiring new skills. With clear goals and determination (just like how we started) they definitely can start online freelancing in no time.
The problem is, for the newcomers and also for veteran freelancers, more people in the fields meaning pitching will become more competitive, finding a job will be harder. Everything will change when suddenly there are many more freelancers start getting into the market at once.
That’s very likely to be the case and it’s high time we started acting to adapt to the changes, maybe by acquiring new sets of skills, new knowledge pertaining to Industry 4.0, to machines, robots, AI while also sharpening our skill sets to make sure that we would stay in the market.
All in all, to go along with Industry 4.0, we act, not just react.