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Professionals · code 2267

Optometrists and ophthalmic opticians

AI can spot signs of eye disease on a scan. Examining your eyes is still a person's job.

AI barely touches four of the seven tasks, including examining eyes and diagnosing problems with how they move. Prescribing lenses and referring patients are mostly out of its reach too.

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

Optometrists and ophthalmic opticians provide diagnosis, management and treatment services for disorders of the eyes and visual system. They counsel on eye care and prescribe optical aids or other therapies for visual disturbance. Tasks include - (a) examining patients’ eyes and conducting diagnostic tests to assess ocular health and determine the nature and extent of vision problems and abnormalities; (b) testing visual function using specialized instruments and equipment for measuring visual acuity and refractive error, function of visual pathways, visual fields, eye movements, freedom of vision and intraocular pressure; (c) detecting, diagnosing and managing eye disease, including prescribing medications for treatment; (d) consulting with and referring patients to ophthalmologists or other health professionals if additional medical treatment is necessary; (e) detecting and diagnosing eye movement disorders and defects of binocular function, and planning and managing treatment programmes, including counselling patients in eye exercises to coordinate movement and focusing of eyes; (f) prescribing corrective eyeglasses, contact lenses and other vision aids, and checking optical devices for performance, safety, comfort and lifestyle; (g) advising on visual health matters such as contact lens care, vision care for the elderly, optics, visual ergonomics, and occupational and industrial eye safety. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Ophthalmic optician - Optometrist - Orthoptist Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Ophthalmologist - 2212 - Dispensing optician - 3254

  • optometrist
  • orthoptist

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

183 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 23.7 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23.7 = 76.3.

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 38.4 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?

Optometrists and ophthalmic opticians 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.

  • AI screening of retinal scans.
  • Automated vision tests.
  • Records and referral letters.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Examining eyes and diagnosing disease.
  • Managing treatment.
  • Explaining results to patients.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Checking AI-flagged findings.
  • Myopia management in children.
  • More eye care moving out of hospitals.

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

23 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 68 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

38 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 40 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

38 How
hands-on
40 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 46.4 · cramped spaces 18.8 · 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 36, 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. 36

    Prescribing corrective eyeglasses, contact lenses and other vision aids, and checking optical devices for performance, safety, comfort and lifestyle

    Low
  2. 27

    Consulting with and referring patients to ophthalmologists or other health professionals if additional medical treatment is necessary

    Low
  3. 26

    Testing visual function using specialized instruments and equipment for measuring visual acuity and refractive error, function of visual pathways, visual fields, eye movements, freedom of vision and intraocular pressure

    Low
  4. 23

    Advising on visual health matters such as contact lens care, vision care for the elderly, optics, visual ergonomics, and occupational and industrial eye safety.

    Very Low
  5. 22

    Detecting, diagnosing and managing eye disease, including prescribing medications for the treatment of eye disease

    Very Low
  6. 19

    Detecting and diagnosing eye movement disorders and defects of binocular function, and planning and managing treatment programmes, including counselling patients in eye exercises to coordinate movement and focusing of eyes

    Very Low
  7. 15

    Examining patients’ eyes and conducting diagnostic tests to assess ocular health and determine the nature and extent of vision problems and abnormalities

    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
68
AI does it for you
23

Sidekick wins, by 45 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 2514

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 under 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

37
63

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 optometrists be worried?

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

Some of it is changing. Prescribing lenses, referring patients and testing vision are the most exposed tasks, all Low; diagnosing and managing eye disease rate Very Low. AI screening of retinal images is growing, which moves optometrists towards diagnosis and care.

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 →