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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3355

Police inspectors and detectives

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

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 182 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • 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.

76.7
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 23.3 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 23.3 = 76.7

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

50.6
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs

32.3
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 32.8 · hand skill 34.8 · cramped spaces 29.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7 Hands-on, helping and caring for others

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.

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 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 50.6 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 28.5, while the average is 23.3. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 28.5

    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. 26.5

    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. 23.5

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

    Very Low
  6. 10.3

    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 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

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

AI helps you
66
AI does it for you
27

Helping wins by 39 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 4413

Compared with similar jobs

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” group, averaging 65.3. This one is above that.