I think Upwork and Fiverr and dead and don’t know it yet

Are websites like Upwork and Fiverr already dead? Are they just dead men walking? So I saw this question up on explain how fiverr exists in a world of AI agents. The question, Oscar, is basically saying, hey look, AI can do a lot of the low level jobs right now, so why are people still outsourcing on Fiverr and upwork? And surely that's not going to last very long. Basically that's correct. There was a post from Ethan Mollik referencing this research paper here where it found in the very short period of time between November 2022 when ChatGPT was released, and April 2023, there was already a 2% drop in the number of jobs on upwork and a 5.2% drop in the monthly earnings. And that's just in a few months. I haven't been able to find more up to date figures. I'm sure they'll be coming soon. Basically, I think it's the end for sites like this. It's going to be a drawn out process because initially freelancers and Upwork are just going to start using AI to fulfill jobs and lots of people in the market who are purchasing these jobs are not necessarily going to know how to do it themselves with AI. But the writing is on the wall. In three to five years time, I don't think we're going to be talking about Upwork and Fiverr anymore.