AI exposure: Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants
Service automobiles, buses, trucks, boats, and other automotive or marine vehicles with fuel, lubricants, and accessories. Collect payment for services and supplies. May lubricate vehicle, change motor oil, refill antifreeze, or replace lights or other accessories, such as windshield wiper blades or fan belts. May repair or replace tires.
Reading this score
computedAt 18.4% of weighted task load, Automotive and Watercraft Service Attendants sits at the 32th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 75.0% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 14 tasks it averages 2.07 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Prepare daily reports of fuel, oil, and accessory sales, at 80.0%. The least is Clean windshields, at 0.0%. A gap of 80.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within transportation and material moving occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 24.3% across the group's 52 roles, with 33 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 14 tasks, 6 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 8 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 1.50 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.07 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.39 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.68 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.86 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.04 | 0-3 |
Task by task
14 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prepare daily reports of fuel, oil, and accessory sales. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 4.24 | exposed |
| Maintain customer records and follow up periodically with telephone, mail, or personal reminders of services due. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 3.70 | exposed |
| Provide customers with information about local roads or highways. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 2.35 | exposed |
| Order stock, and price and shelve incoming goods. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 4.01 | exposed |
| Collect cash payments from customers, and make change or charge purchases to customers' credit cards, providing customers with receipts. | 36.7% | 13.3% | 50.0% | 4.65 | exposed |
| Activate fuel pumps and fill fuel tanks of vehicles with gasoline or diesel fuel to specified levels. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 3.96 | exposed |
| Sell and install accessories, such as batteries, windshield wiper blades, fan belts, bulbs, or headlamps. | 14.2% | 10.8% | 75.0% | 3.94 | untouched |
| Check tire pressure and levels of fuel, motor oil, transmission, radiator, battery, or other fluids, adding air or fluids as required. | 8.3% | 4.2% | 87.5% | 4.24 | untouched |
| Test and charge batteries. | 5.8% | 6.7% | 87.5% | 3.78 | untouched |
| Perform minor repairs, such as adjusting brakes, replacing spark plugs, or changing engine oil or filters. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.19 | untouched |
| Clean parking areas, offices, restrooms, or equipment, and remove trash. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.13 | untouched |
| Grease and lubricate vehicles or specified units, such as springs, universal joints, or steering knuckles, using grease guns or spray lubricants. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.91 | untouched |
| Rotate, test, and repair or replace tires. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.75 | untouched |
| Clean windshields. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.19 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean. 4 task(s) lacked a usable O*NET weight and are shown but excluded from the weighting.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.