AI exposure: Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians
Diagnose, adjust, repair, or overhaul farm machinery and vehicles, such as tractors, harvesters, dairy equipment, and irrigation systems.
Reading this score
computedAt 13.9% of weighted task load, Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians sits at the 22th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 79.0% 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 2.55 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 details of repairs made and parts used, at 73.3%. The least is Install and repair agricultural irrigation, plumbing, and sprinkler systems, 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 installation, maintenance and repair occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 50 roles in the group is 12.8%, and only 23 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 14 tasks, 3 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 11 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 | 0.82 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.55 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.38 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.01 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.29 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 1.42 | 0-3 |
Task by task
14 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record details of repairs made and parts used. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.49 | exposed |
| Calculate bills according to record of repairs made, labor time, and parts used. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.00 | exposed |
| Examine and listen to equipment, read inspection reports, and confer with customers to locate and diagnose malfunctions. | 31.1% | 27.2% | 41.7% | 4.54 | exposed |
| Reassemble machines and equipment following repair, testing operation and making adjustments, as necessary. | 10.0% | 6.7% | 83.3% | 4.64 | untouched |
| Test and replace electrical components and wiring, using test meters, soldering equipment, and hand tools. | 6.2% | 6.2% | 87.5% | 4.32 | untouched |
| Maintain, repair, and overhaul farm machinery and vehicles, such as tractors, harvesters, and irrigation systems. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.54 | untouched |
| Dismantle defective machines for repair, using hand tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.46 | untouched |
| Clean and lubricate parts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.45 | untouched |
| Repair or replace defective parts, using hand tools, milling and woodworking machines, lathes, welding equipment, grinders, or saws. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.42 | untouched |
| Tune or overhaul engines. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.02 | untouched |
| Drive trucks to haul tools and equipment for on-site repair of large machinery. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.95 | untouched |
| Fabricate new metal parts, using drill presses, engine lathes, and other machine tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.62 | untouched |
| Repair bent or torn sheet metal. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.21 | untouched |
| Install and repair agricultural irrigation, plumbing, and sprinkler systems. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.46 | 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.