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Professionals · code 2250

Veterinarians

AI can suggest a diagnosis. It can't calm the owner or perform the surgery.

AI barely touches any of the nine tasks, from examining animals and talking to worried owners to surgery, setting bones and saying goodbye.

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

Veterinarians diagnose, prevent and treat diseases, injuries and dysfunctions of animals. They may provide care to a wide range of animals or specialize in the treatment of a particular animal group or in a particular speciality area, or provide professional services to commercial firms producing biological and pharmaceutical products. Tasks include - (a) determining the presence and nature of abnormal conditions by physical examination, laboratory testing and through diagnostic imaging techniques including radiography and ultrasound; (b) treating animals medically and surgically, and administering and prescribing drugs, analgesics, and general and local anaesthetics; (c) performing surgery, dressing wounds and setting broken bones; (d) rendering obstetric and dental services to animals; (e) participating in programmes designed to prevent the occurrence and spread of animal diseases; (f) inoculating animals against, and testing for, infectious diseases and notifying authorities of outbreaks of infectious animal diseases; (g) performing autopsies to determine cause of death; (h) advising clients on health, nutrition and feeding, hygiene, breeding and care of animals; (i) providing euthanasia services for animals. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Animal pathologist - Veterinarian - Veterinary epidemiologist - Veterinary intern - Veterinary surgeon

  • animal chiropractor
  • specialised veterinarian
  • aquatic animal health professional
  • general veterinarian
  • official veterinarian

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

86 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

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

64 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 14.2 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 14.2 = 85.8.

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 37.2 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?

Veterinarians 86

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.

  • Reading scans and lab results with AI support.
  • Clinical notes and records.
  • Researching rare conditions.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Surgery and hands-on treatment.
  • Judgement with incomplete information.
  • Difficult conversations, including about euthanasia.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Checking AI-assisted diagnoses.
  • Remote consultations and monitoring.
  • Disease surveillance and outbreak response.

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

22 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 60 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

37 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 51 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

37 How
hands-on
51 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, matched to one US job .

finger skill 55.4 · hand skill 50 · cramped spaces 48 · 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 22, against an average of 14. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 22

    Advising clients on health, nutrition and feeding, hygiene, breeding and care of animals

    Very Low
  2. 21

    Determining the presence and nature of abnormal conditions by physical examination, laboratory testing and through diagnostic imaging techniques including radiography and ultrasound

    Very Low
  3. 17

    Participating in programmes designed to prevent the occurrence and spread of animal diseases

    Very Low
  4. 15

    Inoculating animals against, and testing for, infectious diseases and notifying authorities of outbreaks of infectious animal diseases

    Very Low
  5. 13

    Performing autopsies to determine cause of death

    Very Low
  6. 12

    Treating animals medically and surgically, and administering and prescribing drugs, analgesics, and general and local anaesthetics

    Very Low
  7. 11

    Rendering obstetric and dental services to animals

    Very Low
  8. 10

    Providing euthanasia services for animals.

    Very Low
  9. 9

    Performing surgery, dressing wounds and setting broken bones

    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
60
AI does it for you
22

Sidekick wins, by 38 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 2347

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?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.02% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

41
59

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.

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 vets be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. Every task rates Very Low, including diagnosis and advice. AI is starting to help with imaging, records and suggestions, which may speed things up. Surgery, treatment and difficult conversations stay with the vet.

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 above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →