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Professionals · code 2266

Audiologists and speech therapists

An app can run a hearing test. Helping a child learn to talk is still human work.

AI barely touches four of the seven tasks, including speech therapy and fitting hearing aids. Running tests and referring patients are mostly out of its reach too.

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

Audiologists and speech therapists evaluate, manage and treat physical disorders affecting human hearing, speech, communication and swallowing. They prescribe corrective devices or rehabilitative therapies for hearing loss, speech disorders and related sensory and neural problems, and provide counselling on hearing safety and communication performance. Tasks include - (a) evaluating hearing, speech and language performance in patients to determine the nature of hearing and communication disorders; (b) administering hearing or speech/language tests or other examinations using specialized diagnostic instruments and equipment, and interpreting test results alongside other medical, social and behavioural diagnostic data to determine appropriate courses of treatment; (c) planning, directing and participating in counselling, screening, speech rehabilitation and other programmes related to hearing and communication; (d) prescribing hearing aids and other assistive devices according to patients’ needs and instructing them in their use; (e) planning and conducting treatment programmes to manage physical disorders affecting speech and swallowing; (f) counselling and guiding hearing and/or language-impaired individuals, their families, teachers and employers; (g) referring patients and families to additional medical or educational services if needed. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Audiologist - Language therapist - Speech pathologist - Speech therapist

  • audiologist
  • speech and language therapist

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

76 / 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

184 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 23.8 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23.8 = 76.2.

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 30.4 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?

Audiologists and speech therapists 76

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.

  • Hearing tests through apps and automated equipment.
  • Practice exercises by app.
  • Reports and referrals.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Assessing speech and hearing.
  • Therapy with patients and families.
  • Fitting and adjusting hearing aids.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Remote therapy by video.
  • Over-the-counter hearing aids.
  • AI speech tools for people who can't speak.

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

30 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 69 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

30 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 26 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

30 How
hands-on
26 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 41.2 · hand skill 25 · cramped spaces 11.4 · 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 28, against an average of 24. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 28

    Administering hearing or speech/language tests or other examinations using specialized diagnostic instruments and equipment, and interpreting test results alongside other medical, social and behavioural diagnostic data to determine appropriate courses of treatment

    Low
  2. 27

    Referring patients and families to additional medical or educational services if needed.

    Low
  3. 25

    Counselling and guiding hearing and/or language-impaired individuals, their families, teachers and employers

    Low
  4. 24

    Evaluating hearing, speech and language performance in patients to determine the nature of hearing and communication disorders

    Very Low
  5. 24

    Planning, directing and participating in counselling, screening, speech rehabilitation and other programmes related to hearing and communication

    Very Low
  6. 22

    Planning and conducting treatment programmes to manage physical disorders affecting speech and swallowing

    Very Low
  7. 17

    Prescribing hearing aids and other assistive devices according to patients’ needs and instructing them in their use

    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
69
AI does it for you
30

Sidekick wins, by 39 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2527

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 0.01% 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

55
45

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.

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 audiologists and speech therapists be worried?

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

Parts of it are changing. Running tests, referring and counselling are the most exposed tasks, all Low; assessment and therapy rate Very Low. Apps and AI help with testing and practice; therapy relationships stay 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 above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →