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Craft and related trades workers · code 7515

Food and beverage tasters and graders

Software can record the grade. Tasting the coffee is still a trained palate.

Recording grades on tags and sheets is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Tasting, smelling, weighing and measuring the product it barely touches.

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

Food and beverage tasters and graders inspect, taste and grade various types of agricultural products, food and beverages. Tasks include - (a) inspecting, testing, tasting and smelling agricultural products, food and beverages at various stages of processing; (b) determining quality, acceptability to consumer tastes and approximate value of products, and grading them into appropriate classes; (c) discarding inferior products; (d) recording the grade and/or identification numbers on tags, receiving or sales sheets; (e) weighing and measuring products. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Food grader - Food taster - Liquor taster - Tea taster - Wine taster

  • farm milk controller
  • food grader
  • master coffee roaster
  • malt master
  • coffee taster

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

69 / 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: Minimal Exposure

246 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 5 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 30.6 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 30.6 = 69.4.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 55.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, and for work like this robots are the bigger question.

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?

Food and beverage tasters and graders 69

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.

  • Recording grades and batch data.
  • Camera and sensor grading of produce.
  • Sales and receiving records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Tasting and smelling products.
  • Judging quality and value.
  • Building a trained palate over years.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Electronic noses and tongues as aids.
  • Speciality coffee, wine and craft drinks.
  • Traceability and origin claims.

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

32 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 62 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

56 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?

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.

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.

56 How
hands-on
32 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, less fiddly work

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 2 US jobs .

finger skill 35.7 · hand skill 37.5 · cramped spaces 21.9 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4

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 55, against an average of 31. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 55

    Recording the grade and/or identification numbers on tags, receiving, or sales sheets

    Medium
  2. 37

    Determining quality, acceptability to consumer tastes and approximate value of products, and grading them into appropriate classes

    Low
  3. 25

    Discarding inferior products

    Low
  4. 20

    Inspecting, testing, tasting and smelling agricultural products, food and beverages at various stages of processing

    Very Low
  5. 17

    Weighing and measuring products.

    Very Low

5 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
62
AI does it for you
32

Sidekick wins, by 30 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 8311, 8393

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 0.01% 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

51
49

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.

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 food and drink tasters and graders be worried?

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

The paperwork is moving. Recording grades is rated Medium, and judging quality and discarding inferior products are Low; tasting, smelling and inspecting rate Very Low. Sensors and cameras help grade some produce, but taste and smell stay human.

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 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” family, averaging 84. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →