AI exposure: Butchers and Meat Cutters
Cut, trim, or prepare consumer-sized portions of meat for use or sale in retail establishments.
Reading this score
computedAt 15.2% of weighted task load, Butchers and Meat Cutters sits at the 24th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 76.1% 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 11 tasks it averages 2.09 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 Record quantity of meat received and issued to cooks or keep records of meat sales, at 73.3%. The least is Cure, smoke, tenderize, and preserve meat, at 0.0%. A gap of 73.3% 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 production occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 16.2% across the group's 107 roles, with 59 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 11 tasks, 3 are currently banded exposed, 1 assisted and 7 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 | 1.23 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.09 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.45 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.94 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.29 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.15 | 0-3 |
Task by task
11 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record quantity of meat received and issued to cooks or keep records of meat sales. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.22 | exposed |
| Estimate requirements and order or requisition meat supplies to maintain inventories. | 67.1% | 20.4% | 12.5% | 4.28 | exposed |
| Negotiate with representatives from supply companies to determine order details. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 3.93 | exposed |
| Supervise other butchers or meat cutters. | 20.0% | 30.0% | 50.0% | 4.14 | assisted |
| Receive, inspect, and store meat upon delivery to ensure meat quality. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.46 | untouched |
| Prepare and place meat cuts and products in display counter to appear attractive and catch the shopper's eye. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.70 | untouched |
| Wrap, weigh, label, and price cuts of meat. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.60 | untouched |
| Cut, trim, bone, tie, and grind meats, such as beef, pork, poultry, and fish, to prepare in cooking form. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.55 | untouched |
| Prepare special cuts of meat ordered by customers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Shape, lace, and tie roasts, using boning knife, skewer, and twine. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.88 | untouched |
| Cure, smoke, tenderize, and preserve meat. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.99 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
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.