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Professionals · code 2113

Chemists

AI can suggest the molecule. Making it in the lab is still chemistry.

Research and writing up papers are where AI could take a fair chunk. Developing new materials is mostly out of its reach, and coaxing microbes into making new compounds it barely touches.

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

Chemists conduct research, improve or develop concepts, theories and operational methods, or apply scientific knowledge relating to chemistry, to develop new knowledge or products and for quality and process control. Tasks include - (a) conducting research and improving or developing concepts, instruments, theories and operational methods related to chemistry; (b) conducting experiments, tests and analyses to investigate chemical composition and energy and chemical changes in various natural or synthetic substances, materials and products; (c) developing procedures for environmental control, quality control and various other procedures for manufacturers or users; (d) conducting programmes of sample and data collection and analysis to identify and quantify environmental toxicants; (e) participating in interdisciplinary research and development projects working with chemical engineers, biologists, microbiologists, agronomists, geologists or other professionals; (f) using micro-organisms to convert substances into new compounds; (g) determining ways to strengthen or combine materials or develop new materials. (h) reproducing and synthesizing naturally occurring substances and creating new artificial substances; (i) preparing scientific papers and reports. Example of the occupations classified here: - Chemist Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Biochemist - 2131 - Pharmacologist - 2131 - Pharmacist - 2262

  • sensory scientist
  • chemist

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

61 / 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: Minimal Exposure

319 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 9 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 38.7 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 38.7 = 61.3.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 36.4 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?

Chemists 61

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.

  • Literature and research planning.
  • Writing papers and reports.
  • Predicting properties of new compounds.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Synthesising and testing substances.
  • Designing experiments.
  • Lab safety and judgement.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • AI-driven materials discovery.
  • Automated self-driving labs.
  • Green chemistry and battery materials.

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

33 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 74 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

36 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 23 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

36 How
hands-on
23 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 33.1 · hand skill 26.7 · cramped spaces 8.1 · 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 55, against an average of 39. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 55

    Conducting research and improving or developing concepts, instruments, theories and operational methods related to chemistry

    Medium
  2. 51

    Preparing scientific papers and reports.

    Medium
  3. 43

    Reproducing and synthesizing naturally occurring substances and creating new artificial substances

    Low
  4. 39

    Developing procedures for environmental control, quality control and various other procedures for manufacturers or users

    Low
  5. 39

    Conducting programmes of sample and data collection and analysis to identify and quantify environmental toxicants

    Low
  6. 37

    Conducting experiments, tests and analyses to investigate chemical composition and energy and chemical changes in various natural or synthetic substances, materials and products

    Low
  7. 35

    Participating in interdisciplinary research and development projects working with chemical engineers, biologists, microbiologists, agronomists, geologists or other professionals

    Low
  8. 29

    Determining ways to strengthen or combine materials or develop new materials.

    Low
  9. 23

    Using micro-organisms to convert substances into new compounds

    Very Low

9 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
74
AI does it for you
33

Sidekick wins, by 41 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 2342

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

50
50

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 0.14% 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 chemists be worried?

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

Parts of the work are changing. Research and writing papers are rated Medium; synthesis, procedures, sampling, experiments, collaboration and new materials are Low; using micro-organisms rates Very Low. AI speeds up discovery and writing; lab work stays human.

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 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →