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Service and sales workers · code 5165

Driving instructors

An app can teach the Highway Code. Sitting beside a nervous learner at a roundabout is another matter.

AI barely touches any of the six tasks, from teaching road rules and safety to sitting beside learners behind the wheel. Brave work.

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

Driving instructors teach people how to drive motor vehicles. Tasks include - (a) instructing students under actual driving conditions, and explaining and demonstrating the operation of brakes, clutch, gear selection, automatic transmission, signals and lights; (b) teaching road traffic regulations; (c) teaching road craft and road safety; (d) advising students when they are ready to undergo driving examination; (e) advising on and teaching advanced driving techniques required for emergency situations; (f) illustrating and explaining handling and mechanical operation of motor vehicles and driving techniques, using blackboard diagrams and audiovisual aids. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Driving instructor Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Flying instructor - 3153

  • driving instructor

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

80 / 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

146 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 20.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 20.5 = 79.5.

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.

This job rates 29.2 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?

Driving instructors 80

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.

  • Theory practice through apps.
  • Bookings and payments.
  • Tracking learner progress.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Teaching in real traffic.
  • Keeping learners calm and safe.
  • Judging when someone is ready.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Teaching with driver assistance systems.
  • Electric car lessons.
  • Refresher training as cars change.

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

33 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 65 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

29 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

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

29 How
hands-on
18 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, matched to one US job .

finger skill 26.9 · hand skill 19.7 · cramped spaces 6.3 · 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 25, against an average of 21. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 25

    Teaching road craft and road safety

    Very Low
  2. 24

    Teaching road traffic regulations

    Very Low
  3. 22

    Advising students when they are ready to undergo driving examination

    Very Low
  4. 21

    Advising on and teaching advanced driving techniques required for emergency situations

    Very Low
  5. 17

    Instructing students under actual driving conditions, and explaining and demonstrating the operation of brakes, clutch, gear selection, automatic transmission, signals and lights

    Very Low
  6. 16

    Illustrating and explaining handling and mechanical operation of motor vehicles and driving techniques using blackboard diagrams and audiovisual aids.

    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
65
AI does it for you
33

Sidekick wins, by 32 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 4512

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

53
47

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 0.1% of the conversations.

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 driving instructors be worried?

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

No. Every task rates Very Low, from teaching road craft to deciding when someone is ready for the test. Apps help with theory, and cars have more driver assistance, but learning to drive is taught in the car. Self-driving cars are the long-term question.

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 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” family, averaging 74. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →