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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3142

Agricultural technicians

AI can estimate the project costs. Checking seeds under a microscope is still hands-on.

AI barely touches five of the nine tasks, including setting up experiments and maintaining research kit. Collecting data and estimating costs are mostly out of its reach too.

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

Agricultural technicians perform tests and experiments, and provide technical and scientific support to agricultural scientists, farmers and farm managers. Tasks include - (a) preparing materials and equipment for experiments, tests and analyses; (b) collecting and preparing specimens such as soils, plant or animal cells, tissues or parts of animal organs for experiments, tests and analyses; (c) assisting with and performing experiments, tests and analyses applying methods and techniques such as microscopy, histochemistry, chromatography, electrophoresis and spectroscopy; (d) identifying pathogenic micro-organisms and insects, parasites, fungi and weeds harmful to crops and livestock, and assisting in devising methods of control; (e) analysing produce to set and maintain standards of quality; (f) conducting or supervising operational programmes such as fish hatchery, greenhouse and livestock production programmes; (g) analysing samples of seeds for quality, purity and germination rating; (h) collecting data and estimating quantities and costs of materials and labour required for projects; (i) organizing maintenance and repairs of research equipment. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Dairy technician - Field crop technician - Herd tester - Horticultural technician - Poultry technician Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Artificial inseminator - 3240 - Veterinary technician - 3240

  • agricultural technician

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

74 / 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

204 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 25.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 25.9 = 74.1.

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 47.3 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?

Agricultural technicians 74

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.

  • Cost estimates and project data.
  • Lab analysis with automated instruments.
  • Quality records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Collecting and preparing specimens.
  • Identifying pests and diseases.
  • Supervising trials and programmes.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Precision farming data.
  • Plant and animal genetics work.
  • Climate-resilient crop trials.

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

41 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 72 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

47 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

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

47 How
hands-on
34 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 39.3 · hand skill 34.8 · cramped spaces 29.1 · 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 42, against an average of 26. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 42

    Collecting data and estimating quantities and costs of materials and labour required for projects

    Low
  2. 37

    Assisting with and performing experiments, tests and analyses applying methods and techniques such as microscopy, histochemistry, chromatography, electrophoresis and spectroscopy

    Low
  3. 34

    Analysing produce to set and maintain standards of quality

    Low
  4. 28

    Conducting or supervising operational programmes such as fish hatchery, greenhouse and livestock production programmes

    Low
  5. 24

    Analysing samples of seeds for quality, purity and germination rating

    Very Low
  6. 19

    Identifying pathogenic micro-organisms and insects, parasites, fungi and weeds harmful to crops and livestock, and assisting in devising methods of control

    Very Low
  7. 18

    Collecting and preparing specimens such as soils, plant or animal cells, tissues or parts or animal organs for experiments, tests and analyses

    Very Low
  8. 17

    Organizing maintenance and repairs of research equipment.

    Very Low
  9. 17

    Preparing materials and equipment for experiments, tests and analyses

    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
72
AI does it for you
41

Sidekick wins, by 31 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 3111

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

72
28

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 0.19% 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 agricultural technicians be worried?

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

Parts of it are changing. Estimating costs, running tests and analysing produce are the most exposed tasks, all Low; identifying pests and preparing samples rate Very Low. Data tools help; field and lab work stay practical.

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 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →