AI exposure: Cleaning, Washing, and Metal Pickling Equipment Operators and Tenders
Operate or tend machines to wash or clean products, such as barrels or kegs, glass items, tin plate, food, pulp, coal, plastic, or rubber, to remove impurities.
Reading this score
computedAt 18.0% of weighted task load, Cleaning, Washing, and Metal Pickling Equipment Operators and Tenders sits at the 30th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 72.0% 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 11 tasks it averages 2.64 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 gauge readings, materials used, processing times, or test results in production logs, at 73.3%. The least is Load machines with objects to be processed and unload them after cleaning, placing them on..., 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 more exposed than most. The median across the 107 roles in the group is 16.1%, and only 42 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 11 tasks, 3 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 | 1.05 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.64 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.36 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.77 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.00 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.05 | 0-3 |
Task by task
11 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record gauge readings, materials used, processing times, or test results in production logs. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 3.84 | exposed |
| Observe machine operations, gauges, or thermometers, and adjust controls to maintain specified conditions. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.13 | exposed |
| Set controls to regulate temperature and length of cycles, and start conveyors, pumps, agitators, and machines. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 4.09 | exposed |
| Operate or tend machines to wash and remove impurities from items such as barrels or kegs, glass products, tin plate surfaces, dried fruit, pulp, animal stock, coal, manufactured articles, plastic, or rubber. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 3.95 | untouched |
| Examine and inspect machines to detect malfunctions. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 3.81 | untouched |
| Draw samples for laboratory analysis, or test solutions for conformance to specifications, such as acidity or specific gravity. | 5.8% | 6.7% | 87.5% | 4.07 | untouched |
| Add specified amounts of chemicals to equipment at required times to maintain solution levels and concentrations. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.25 | untouched |
| Drain, clean, and refill machines or tanks at designated intervals, using cleaning solutions or water. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.96 | untouched |
| Measure, weigh, or mix cleaning solutions, using measuring tanks, calibrated rods or suction tubes. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.63 | untouched |
| Adjust, clean, and lubricate mechanical parts of machines, using hand tools and grease guns. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Load machines with objects to be processed and unload them after cleaning, placing them on conveyors or racks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.79 | 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.