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Service and sales workers · code 5412

Police officers

Police officers maintain law and order, patrolling public areas, enforcing laws and regulations and arresting suspected offenders. Tasks include - (a) patrolling a specific area to maintain public order, responding to emergencies, protecting people and property and enforcing laws and regulations; (b) identifying, pursuing and arresting suspects and perpetrators of criminal acts; (c) directing traffic and assuming authority in the event of accidents; (d) providing emergency assistance to victims of accidents, crimes and natural disasters. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Constable - Police officer - Police patrol officer Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Police chief constable - 1112 - Police commissioner - 1112 - Police inspector-general - 1112 - Police detective - 3355 - Police inspector - 3355

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 58 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • police officer

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

86.1
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 13.9 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 13.9 = 86.1

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

61.2
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 4 US jobs

39.5
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 36.9 · hand skill 40.8 · cramped spaces 40.8 · 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 61.2 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 19, while the average is 13.9. 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. 19

    Directing traffic and assuming authority in the event of accidents

    Very Low
  2. 12.5

    Providing emergency assistance to victims of accidents, crimes and natural disasters.

    Very Low
  3. 12.3

    Identifying, pursuing and arresting suspects and perpetrators of criminal acts

    Very Low
  4. 12

    Patrolling a specific area to maintain public order, responding to emergencies, protecting people and property and enforcing laws and regulations

    Very Low

4 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 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.1. This one is above that.