Digital technologies, notably AI and smart algorithms, are radically transforming our work environments and demand for skills. The 2019 Digital Skill Gap Report (DCMS) found that creative work is most severely affected by this technology shift as the report calls it a “hotspot for new digital skills”.
However, despite the continual urging for adult workers to “reskill”, there is no generalisable approach to this challenge, given the extreme individuality of the process. At the same time, creative work is shaped by new forms of digital freelance labour. While these remote working platforms further accelerate the technological shift in creative work, they also provide unique secondary data to study the skill development of creative workers towards sustainable new occupations.
In accordance with one of the main objectives of the Digit Research Centre – “understanding the connected worker” – this project proposes to use online freelance data from UK-based creative workers to better understand the UK’s creative sector digital skill composition, identify skills that are most endangered by automation, and show how much job conditions, in terms of wage increases, job security, and career progress, could be improved with targeted individual reskilling.
Departmental Research Lecturer
Project role: Principal Investigator
Fabian is a Departmental Research Lecturer in AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research
Vili Lehdonvirta examines the politics and socio-economic impacts of digital technologies. He is one of the world's most cited authors on gig work and the platform economy. His current research deals with the geopolitics of digital infrastructures.
This project explores how the analysis of online generated labour market data can help us understand the relevance of new skills and sustainability of novel occupations.
