AI exposure: Chemists

At 26.8% of weighted task load, Chemists sits at the 49th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 50.3% 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 verification cost. Across this occupation's 12 tasks it averages 1.76 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.

The most exposed thing this job does is Write technical papers or reports or prepare standards and specifications for processes,..., at 58.3%. The least is Direct, coordinate, or advise personnel in test procedures for analyzing components or physical..., at 10.0%. A gap of 48.3% 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 life, physical and social science occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 36.3% across the group's 60 roles, with 46 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 12 tasks, 4 are currently banded exposed, 4 assisted and 4 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.