Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: Empowering Online Freelancers using Value-Sensitive Design to Amplify Human-AI Interaction

The goal of this research is to create artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced digital tools to amplify freelance workers ability to work in online labor markets. This research is important because online freelancing -- in which professionals work on a collection of individual tasks, outside of traditional workplaces -- is rapidly becoming a significant component of modern labor markets.

Online freelancers need to market themselves, find well-paying and skill-enhancing jobs, and be able to perform and get credit for quality work. However, online labor markets make it hard to do this at times because of their design: their policies are often more friendly to employers than to freelancers, while their algorithms for matching people with jobs and prices are often opaque to workers.

The key idea of this project is that AI-enhanced digital tools may be able to help workers better-manage their profiles, workload, and task performance. To that end, the project team will work with online freelancers to develop and evaluate a number of prototypes that counter these problems. If successful, the research will both improve the specific problems of online freelancing work as well as provide an example of how AI-enabled tools, designed wisely, can complement rather than replace people in jobs.

To achieve this goal, the research effort leverages human-centered design principles. Working with a carefully selected and steadily updated sample of online freelancers, data will be gathered through interviews and focus groups to identify and advance the functionality and needs of AI-enabled tools to support these workers. In doing this, the research effort leverages the investigators' ongoing work in building similar tools for crowd workers and insights from an ongoing panel study of online freelance workers.

Over three years and through multiple design, deployment, and feedback cycles, the research team will collaborate with organizations dedicated to supporting online workers. Together, they will enhance the AI-enabled tools' functionality and design to address the needs of these workers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.