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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3434

Chefs

Chefs design menus, create dishes and oversee the planning, organization, preparation and cooking of meals in hotels, restaurants and other eating places, on board ships, on passenger trains and in private households. Tasks include - (a) planning and developing recipes and menus, estimating food and labour costs, and ordering food supplies; (b) monitoring quality of dishes at all stages of preparation and presentation; (c) discussing food preparation issues with managers, dieticians, kitchen and waiting staff; (d) supervising and coordinating the activities of cooks and other workers engaged in food preparation; (e) inspecting supplies, equipment and work areas to ensure conformity with established standards; (f) determining how food should be presented, and creating decorative food displays; (g) instructing cooks and other workers in the preparation, cooking, garnishing and presentation of food; (h) participating in the recruitment of kitchen staff and monitoring their performance; (i) preparing, seasoning and cooking speciality foods and complex dishes; (j) explaining and enforcing hygiene and food safety regulations. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Chef - Executive chef - Head chef - Pastry chef - Saucier - Sous-chef Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Cook - 5120 - Fast food preparer - 9411

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 200 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • chef

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

74.9
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 25.1 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 25.1 = 74.9

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

52.7
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

36
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 40.2 · hand skill 41 · cramped spaces 26.8 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

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 52.7 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 38.3, while the average is 25.1. 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. 38.3

    Planning and developing recipes and menus, estimating food and labour costs, and ordering food supplies

    Low
  2. 28.5

    Discussing food preparation issues with managers, dieticians, kitchen and waiting staff

    Low
  3. 27

    Participating on the recruitment of kitchen staff and monitoring their performance

    Low
  4. 27

    Explaining and enforcing hygiene and food safety regulations.

    Low
  5. 26

    Supervising and coordinating the activities of cooks and other workers engaged in food preparation

    Low
  6. 23.8

    Instructing cooks and other workers in the preparation, cooking, garnishing and presentation of food

    Very Low
  7. 23.5

    Inspecting supplies, equipment, and work areas to ensure conformity to established standards

    Very Low
  8. 22.3

    Determining how food should be presented, and creating decorative food displays.

    Very Low
  9. 18

    Monitoring quality of dishes at all stages of preparation and presentation

    Very Low
  10. 16.3

    Preparing, seasoning and cooking speciality foods and complex dishes

    Very Low

10 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
65
AI does it for you
31

Helping wins by 34 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3513

Compared with similar jobs

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

A closer look

There's a written profile for this job, with notes on what changes and what stays human.