AI exposure: Cutters and Trimmers, Hand
Use hand tools or hand-held power tools to cut and trim a variety of manufactured items, such as carpet, fabric, stone, glass, or rubber.
Reading this score
computedCutters and Trimmers, Hand is among the least exposed occupations measured, at 6.7% of weighted task load, rank 852 of 923. 90.4% of this job is work current AI systems cannot produce at all. That is not a statement about skill or value. It is a statement about what these systems can and cannot do.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 18 tasks it averages 2.83 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 Read work orders to determine dimensions, cutting locations, and quantities to cut, at 55.0%. The least is Transport items to work or storage areas, at 0.0%. A gap of 55.0% 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 production occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 16.2% across the group's 107 roles, with 96 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 18 tasks, 2 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 16 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 | 0.44 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.83 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.19 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.08 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.61 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.59 | 0-3 |
Task by task
18 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read work orders to determine dimensions, cutting locations, and quantities to cut. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 4.28 | exposed |
| Adjust guides and stops to control depths and widths of cuts. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 3.89 | exposed |
| Lower table-mounted cutters such as knife blades, cutting wheels, or saws to cut items to specified sizes. | 15.0% | 10.0% | 75.0% | 3.99 | untouched |
| Route items to provide cutouts for parts, using portable routers, grinders, and hand tools. | 15.0% | 10.0% | 75.0% | 3.63 | untouched |
| Count or weigh and bundle items. | 10.0% | 2.5% | 87.5% | 3.80 | untouched |
| Clean, treat, buff, or polish finished items, using grinders, brushes, chisels, and cleaning solutions and polishing materials. | 5.6% | 2.8% | 91.7% | 3.70 | untouched |
| Mark or discard items with defects such as spots, stains, scars, snags, chips, scratches, or unacceptable shapes or finishes. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.43 | untouched |
| Trim excess material or cut threads off finished products, such as cutting loose ends of plastic off a manufactured toy for a smoother finish. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.34 | untouched |
| Cut, shape, and trim materials, such as textiles, food, glass, stone, and metal, using knives, scissors, and other hand tools, portable power tools, or bench-mounted tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.33 | untouched |
| Position templates or measure materials to locate specified points of cuts or to obtain maximum yields, using rules, scales, or patterns. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.30 | untouched |
| Mark cutting lines around patterns or templates, or follow layout points, using squares, rules, and straightedges, and chalk, pencils, or scribes. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Mark identification numbers, trademarks, grades, marketing data, sizes, or model numbers on products. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.24 | untouched |
| Unroll, lay out, attach, or mount materials or items on cutting tables or machines. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.22 | untouched |
| Separate materials or products according to size, weight, type, condition, color, or shade. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.21 | untouched |
| Fold or shape materials before or after cutting them. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.17 | untouched |
| Replace or sharpen dulled cutting tools such as saws. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.88 | untouched |
| Stack cut items and load them on racks or conveyors or onto trucks. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.99 | untouched |
| Transport items to work or storage areas, using carts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.31 | 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.