AI exposure: Hearing Aid Specialists
Select and fit hearing aids for customers. Administer and interpret tests of hearing. Assess hearing instrument efficacy. Take ear impressions and prepare, design, and modify ear molds.
Reading this score
computedHearing Aid Specialists is among the least exposed occupations measured, at 7.8% of weighted task load, rank 833 of 923. 76.6% 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 11 tasks it averages 2.36 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 current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or..., at 30.0%. The least is Assist audiologists in performing aural procedures, at 0.0%. A gap of 30.0% 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 healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.5% across the group's 89 roles, with 84 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, 1 are currently banded exposed, 2 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 | 0.95 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.36 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.09 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.27 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.55 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.32 | 0-3 |
Task by task
11 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in audiology. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 3.98 | exposed |
| Counsel patients and families on communication strategies and the effects of hearing loss. | 15.0% | 35.0% | 50.0% | 4.78 | assisted |
| Diagnose and treat hearing or related disabilities under the direction of an audiologist. | 10.0% | 40.0% | 50.0% | 4.27 | assisted |
| Select and administer tests to evaluate hearing or related disabilities. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 4.77 | untouched |
| Administer basic hearing tests including air conduction, bone conduction, or speech audiometry tests. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 4.73 | untouched |
| Train clients to use hearing aids or other augmentative communication devices. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.85 | untouched |
| Demonstrate assistive listening devices (ALDs) to clients. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 3.68 | untouched |
| Perform basic screening procedures, such as pure tone screening, otoacoustic screening, immittance screening, and screening of ear canal status using otoscope. | 2.9% | 9.6% | 87.5% | 4.65 | untouched |
| Maintain or repair hearing aids or other communication devices. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.65 | untouched |
| Create or modify impressions for earmolds and hearing aid shells. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.45 | untouched |
| Assist audiologists in performing aural procedures, such as real ear measurements, speech audiometry, auditory brainstem responses, electronystagmography, and cochlear implant mapping. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.35 | 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.