Skip to content
man bot
Compare

Professionals · code 2632

Sociologists, anthropologists and related professionals

AI can crunch the social data. Living in a community to understand it is still anthropology.

AI could take a fair chunk of five of the nine tasks, led by analysing social data and advising on policy. Piecing together human history from excavated remains it barely touches.

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

Sociologists, anthropologists and related professionals investigate and describe the structure, origin and evolution of societies and the interdependence between environmental conditions and human activities. They provide advice on the practical application of their findings in the formulation of economic and social policies. Tasks include - (a) conducting research on the origin, development, structure, social patterns, organizations and interrelationships of human society; (b) tracing the origin and evolution of humanity through the study of changing characteristics and cultural and social institutions; (c) tracing the development of humanity through the material remains of its past, such as dwellings, temples, tools, pottery, coins, weapons or sculpture; (d) studying physical and climatic aspects of areas and regions, and correlating these findings with economic, social and cultural activities; (e) developing theories, models and methods to interpret and describe social phenomena; (f) evaluating the outcome of political decisions concerning social policy; (g) analysing and evaluating social data; (h) advising on the practical application of findings in the formulation of economic and social policies for population groups and regions, and for the development of markets; (i) preparing scholarly papers and reports. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Anthropologist - Archaeologist - Criminologist - Ethnologist - Geographer - Sociologist

  • behavioural scientist
  • criminologist
  • archaeologist
  • geographer
  • anthropologist
  • thanatology researcher
  • sociologist

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

52 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

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: Exposed: Gradient 2

367 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 47.8 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 47.8 = 52.2.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 2”: A good share of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 19 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?

Sociologists, anthropologists and related professionals 52

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.

  • Analysing social data.
  • Writing papers and reports.
  • Literature reviews.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Fieldwork and interviews.
  • Excavation.
  • Interpreting what people mean.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Studying how AI changes society.
  • AI in social research.
  • Research ethics.

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: Medium

47 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

19 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 9 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

19 How
hands-on
9 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 3 US jobs .

finger skill 9.5 · hand skill 7.8 · cramped spaces 9.6 · 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 62, against an average of 48. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 62

    Analysing and evaluating social data

    Medium
  2. 56

    Advising on the practical application of findings in the formulation of economic and social policies for population groups and regions, and for the development of markets

    Medium
  3. 56

    Conducting research on the origin, development, structure, social patterns, organizations and interrelationships of human society

    Medium
  4. 55

    Studying physical and climatic aspects of areas and regions, and correlating these findings with economic, social and cultural activities

    Medium
  5. 54

    Preparing scholarly papers and reports.

    Medium
  6. 46

    Developing theories, models and methods to interpret and describe social phenomena

    Low
  7. 45

    Tracing the origin and evolution of humanity through the study of changing characteristics and cultural and social institutions

    Low
  8. 37

    Evaluating the outcome of political decisions concerning social policy

    Low
  9. 21

    Tracing the development of humanity through the material remains of its past, such as dwellings, temples, tools, pottery, coins, weapons or sculpture

    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
71
AI does it for you
47

Sidekick wins, by 24 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 2724

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

68
32

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 0.23% of the conversations.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 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 sociologists and anthropologists be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Parts of the work are changing. Data analysis, policy advice, research, regional studies and papers are rated Medium; theory, human origins and evaluating policy are Low; excavation rates Very Low. AI speeds up analysis; fieldwork 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 →