On Wednesday, work marketplace Upwork introduced a host of new AI capabilities involving Uma, what it calls its “mindful artificial intelligence” tool.
Uma is used to cut down time spent on listing jobs and helps match candidates with opportunities that are well suited for them. “Uma is built on top of industry-leading large language models, customized with Upwork’s historical platform data,” Dave Bottoms, an Upwork VP, says over email. “It’s this customization that differentiates Uma from other AI solutions and why we’re confident it can power desirable outcomes for our customers.”
Upwork intends for Uma to take on additional basic responsibilities—for example, brainstorming for social media posts, drafting messages, and more—leaving professionals with more time to focus on strategic work and creative problem-solving.
Now freelancers can ask Uma to create tailored proposal drafts for projects and gigs. (The company notes that Uma has been trained on winning proposals.) And for businesses, Uma can identify freelancers who are best aligned with their needs—an evaluation based, in part, on those freelancers’ proposals. That means there’s potential for a world in which the AI is not only helping write but also evaluate the proposals it drafts.
“In essence we are empowering freelancers and businesses to focus on work that truly matters,” Bottoms says.
Other updates announced on Wednesday include Uma-powered Managed Services to enhance project scoping and design optimal teams of experts to deliver work outcomes; Upwork Business Plus, which gives clients access to the top 1% of prescreened talent on the platform; and a partnership between Upwork and Venmo to offer U.S.-based clients more flexibility and payment options.
“In the year ahead, we’ll build on today’s updates and continue to unleash the power of Uma,” Bottoms says, “as well as continuing to innovate and optimize other dimensions of the world’s work marketplace on behalf of our customers.”
Login to add comment
Other posts in this group
Riddle me this: What exactly is Trello?
Despite counting myself as a heavy-duty power user of the product for well over a decade now, it’s a question I’ve long struggled to answer. Techn
The trope of the starving, broke artist has long maintained a place in the public imagination, even as it has morphed into idealized notions of “‘hustle” or “grindset.” “It’s cool to romanticize [
When Apple first introduced MagSafe for the iPhone in 2020, I did not fully appreciate it.
iPhones had supported wireless charging for a few years at that point—and Android phones starte
Even if you’re a regular Alexa user, there’s a good chance you haven’t discovered some of its most efficient features.
Actually, strike that: There’s a good chance you’
The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual
Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit said last week hackers had stolen digital tokens worth around $1.5 billion, in what researchers called the biggest crypto heist of all time.
Bybit CEO Ben Z
