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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3258

Ambulance workers

AI can write up the patient record. It can't do CPR in the back of an ambulance.

Recording patients' condition and treatment is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. It barely touches the other five, from assessing people at the scene to giving drugs on the way to hospital.

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

Ambulance workers provide emergency health care to patients who are injured, sick, infirm or otherwise physically or mentally impaired prior to and during transport to medical facilities. Tasks include - (a) assessing the health status of persons involved in accidents, natural disasters and other emergency situations, and determining needs for immediate and specialized medical assistance; (b) performing medical procedures and administering drugs and other therapies according to protocol for emergency medical treatment, including resuscitating and defibrillating patients and operating life-support equipment; (c) monitoring changes in the health status of patients during transport to and from medical, rehabilitation and other health care facilities; (d) providing information and training to community groups and essential service workers in first aid for initial care of an illness or injury; (e) attending and/or patrolling large-scale public gatherings and other events where health emergencies are more likely to occur; (f) recording information on patients’ conditions and treatments provided in medical record-keeping systems. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Ambulance officer - Ambulance paramedic - Emergency medical technician - Emergency paramedic Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Paramedical practitioner - 2240 - Ambulance driver - 8322 Note Occupations included in this unit group normally require formal training in emergency medical treatment, patient transport, ambulance principles and practice, or a related field. Ambulance drivers who do not provide health care are classified in Unit Group 8322: Car, Taxi and Van Drivers.

  • emergency ambulance driver
  • paramedic in emergency responses

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

79 / 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

161 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 6 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 21.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 21.5 = 78.5.

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.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 72 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Ambulance workers 79

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.

  • Patient records written up from voice notes.
  • Triage and dispatch support.
  • Handover reports.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Assessing and treating patients in emergencies.
  • Keeping calm in chaotic scenes.
  • Caring for patients during transport.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • AI-assisted triage in control rooms.
  • Remote advice from specialists by video.
  • Treating more patients at home.

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

25 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 55 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Higher

72 how hands-on

Most of this job needs hands, a body or turning up. That's robot territory, and nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to give you a number. We won't make one up.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Physical work where helping and caring for people is a big part of the job. For care work, whether a machine could do the movements is only half the question. The other half is whether anyone wants one to. The US data counts helping workmates too, so a few trades end up here.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 57 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

72 How
hands-on
57 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, helping and caring for others

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 48.3 · hand skill 46.4 · cramped spaces 75 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7

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 55, against an average of 22. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 55

    Recording information on patients' conditions and treatments provided in medical records-keeping systems.

    Medium
  2. 23

    Monitoring changes in health status of patients during transport to and from medical, rehabilitation and other health care facilities

    Very Low
  3. 20

    Attending and/or patrolling large-scale public gatherings and other events where health emergencies are more likely to occur

    Very Low
  4. 13

    Providing information and training to community groups and essential service workers in first aid for initial care of an illness or injury

    Very Low
  5. 12

    Assessing health status of persons involved in accidents, natural disasters and other emergency situations, and determining needs for immediate and specialized medical assistance

    Very Low
  6. 6

    Performing medical procedures and administering drugs and other therapies according to protocol for emergency medical treatment, including resuscitating and defibrillating patients and operating life-support equipment

    Very Low

6 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
55
AI does it for you
25

Sidekick wins, by 30 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 4111

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, mostly the paperwork rather than the work. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

51
49

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 paramedics and ambulance staff be worried?

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

No, but the paperwork will change. Recording patients' conditions and treatment is rated Medium; assessing, monitoring and treating patients rate Very Low. Voice notes and AI records could save time. The emergency care 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 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →