Skip to content
man bot
Compare

Technicians and associate professionals · code 3355

Police inspectors and detectives

AI can sift the evidence. It can't sit across the table from a suspect.

Four of the six tasks are mostly out of AI's reach, including analysing evidence and cultivating sources. Gathering intelligence on crimes and making arrests it barely touches.

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

Police inspectors and detectives investigate facts and circumstances relating to crimes committed in order to identify suspected offenders and obtain information not readily available or apparent concerning establishments or the circumstances and behaviour of persons, mostly in order to prevent crimes. Tasks include - (a) establishing contacts and sources of information about crimes planned or committed, in order to prevent crimes or identify suspected offenders; (b) obtaining and verifying evidence by examining crime and accident scenes for clues and physical evidence, interviewing witnesses and suspects and analysing documents and computer files; (c) analysing evidence in order to solve crimes, identify criminal activity and gather information for court cases; (d) establishing contacts and sources of information not readily available or apparent concerning establishments or the circumstances and behaviour of persons, usually with the aim of preventing a crime; (e) making arrests; (f) testifying in courts of law or reporting to superiors about circumstances and results of investigations. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Police detective - Police inquiry agent - Police inspector Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Police commissioner - 1112 - Police inspector-general - 1112 - Police superintendent - 1349 - Private detective - 3411 - Police officer - 5412

  • criminal investigator
  • police inspector
  • police detective

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

77 / 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

182 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 23.3 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23.3 = 76.7.

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 51 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?

Police inspectors and detectives 77

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.

  • Reviewing digital evidence and footage.
  • Analysing records and patterns.
  • Drafting case files.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Interviewing witnesses and suspects.
  • Judging what really happened.
  • Testifying and standing behind the case.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Checking AI analysis before it reaches court.
  • Investigating deepfakes and online crime.
  • Rules on AI evidence.

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

27 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 66 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

51 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?

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

51 How
hands-on
32 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, averaged across 4 US jobs .

finger skill 32.8 · hand skill 34.8 · cramped spaces 29.3 · 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 29, against an average of 23. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 28

    Establishing contacts and sources of information not readily available or apparent concerning establishments or the circumstances and behaviour of persons, usually with the aim of preventing a crime

    Low
  2. 27

    Analysing evidence in order to solve crimes, identify criminal activity and gather information for court cases

    Low
  3. 26

    Obtaining and verifying evidence by examining crime and accident scenes for clues and physical evidence, interviewing witnesses and suspects and analysing documents and computer files

    Low
  4. 25

    Testifying in courts of law or reporting to superiors about circumstances and results of investigations.

    Low
  5. 24

    Establishing contacts and sources of information about crimes planned or committed, in order to prevent crimes or identify suspected offenders

    Very Low
  6. 10

    Making arrests

    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
66
AI does it for you
27

Sidekick wins, by 39 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 4413

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 0.04% 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

54
46

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 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 detectives be worried?

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

Parts of the job are changing. Building sources, analysing evidence, gathering evidence and testifying are the most exposed tasks, all Low; making arrests rates Very Low. AI is taking on more evidence review and analysis, which raises the value of judgement and interviewing.

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

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 →