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Managers · code 1113

Traditional chiefs and heads of village

A phone can share the new regulations. Settling a dispute between neighbours is still leadership.

AI barely touches four of the seven tasks, including sharing out the community's produce and leading ceremonies. Explaining government rules and allocating land are mostly out of its reach too.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Traditional chiefs and heads of villages perform a variety of legislative, administrative and ceremonial tasks and duties, determined by ancient traditions as well as by the division of rights and responsibilities between village chiefs and the local, regional and national authorities. Tasks include - (a) allocating the use of communal land and other resources among households in the community or village; (b) collecting and distributing surplus production of the community or village; (c) settling disputes between members of the community or village; (d) disciplining members of the community or village for violation of rules and customs; (e) performing ceremonial duties in connection with births, marriages, deaths, harvests and other important occasions; (f) representing the community or village on local or regional councils; (g) informing the community or village about government rules and regulations. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Village chief - Village head

77 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

179 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 7 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 23 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23 = 77.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

This job rates 22 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Traditional chiefs and heads of village 77

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Sharing government information by phone and radio.
  • Records of land use.
  • Coordinating with councils.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Settling disputes.
  • Leading ceremonies and community events.
  • Holding the trust of the community.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Mobile communication with officials.
  • Land registration and mapping schemes.
  • Community climate and resource planning.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

20 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 41 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

22 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 8 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

22 How
hands-on
8 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 17 · hand skill 0 · cramped spaces 7.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 37, against an average of 23. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 37

    Informing the community or village about government rules and regulations.

    Low
  2. 32

    Allocating the use of communal land and other resources among households in the community or village

    Low
  3. 30

    Representing the community or village on local or regional councils

    Low
  4. 24

    Settling disputes between members of the community or village

    Very Low
  5. 15

    Disciplining members of the community or village for violation of rules and customs

    Very Low
  6. 15

    Collecting and distributing surplus production of the community or village

    Very Low
  7. 11

    Performing ceremonial duties in connection with births, marriages, deaths, harvests and other important occasions

    Very Low

7 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
41
AI does it for you
20

Sidekick wins, by 21 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 8999

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Out of every 100 conversations

47
53

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job. This job makes up 0.16% of the conversations.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 2 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should traditional chiefs and village heads be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

No. Informing the community, allocating land and representing the village are the most exposed tasks, all Low; settling disputes and ceremonies rate Very Low. Phones and messaging help share information; authority and trust are personal.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 30 jobs in the “Managers” family, averaging 63. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →