AI exposure: Anesthesiologist Assistants
Assist anesthesiologists in the administration of anesthesia for surgical and non-surgical procedures. Monitor patient status and provide patient care during surgical treatment.
Reading this score
computedAt 10.2% of weighted task load, Anesthesiologist Assistants sits at the 14th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 78.6% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is verification cost. Across this occupation's 16 tasks it averages 2.44 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, checking the output costs more than producing it. Where an undetected error is expensive, dangerous or irreversible, the economics change. Someone has to verify the work, and verifying can cost as much as doing it. This is the friction most likely to fall as tools for checking improve.
The most exposed thing this job does is Collect and document patients' pre-anesthetic health histories, at 56.7%. The least is Assist in the application of monitoring techniques, at 0.0%. A gap of 56.7% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within healthcare practitioner and technical occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 18.5% across the group's 89 roles, with 79 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 16 tasks, 3 are currently banded exposed, 1 assisted and 12 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.88 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.28 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.31 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 2.38 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.59 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.44 | 0-3 |
Task by task
16 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collect and document patients' pre-anesthetic health histories. | 56.7% | 43.3% | 0.0% | 4.74 | exposed |
| Verify availability of operating room supplies, medications, and gases. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 4.67 | exposed |
| Monitor and document patients' progress during post-anesthesia period. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 4.00 | assisted |
| Participate in seminars, workshops, or other professional activities to keep abreast of developments in anesthesiology. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 3.74 | exposed |
| Control anesthesia levels during procedures. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 4.96 | untouched |
| Provide clinical instruction, supervision or training to staff in areas such as anesthesia practices. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 3.74 | untouched |
| Pretest and calibrate anesthesia delivery systems and monitors. | 4.2% | 8.3% | 87.5% | 4.80 | untouched |
| Assist anesthesiologists in monitoring of patients, including electrocardiogram (EKG), direct arterial pressure, central venous pressure, arterial blood gas, hematocrit, or routine measurement of temperature, respiration, blood pressure or heart rate. | 2.5% | 10.0% | 87.5% | 5.00 | untouched |
| Provide airway management interventions including tracheal intubation, fiber optics, or ventilary support. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 5.00 | untouched |
| Administer anesthetic, adjuvant, or accessory drugs under the direction of an anesthesiologist. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.96 | untouched |
| Respond to emergency situations by providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), or pediatric advanced life support (PALS). | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.78 | untouched |
| Administer blood, blood products, or supportive fluids. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.73 | untouched |
| Assist anesthesiologists in performing anesthetic procedures, such as epidural or spinal injections. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.52 | untouched |
| Assist in the provision of advanced life support techniques including those procedures using high frequency ventilation or intra-arterial cardiovascular assistance devices. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.19 | untouched |
| Collect samples or specimens for diagnostic testing. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.96 | untouched |
| Assist in the application of monitoring techniques, such as pulmonary artery catheterization, electroencephalographic spectral analysis, echocardiography, or evoked potentials. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.67 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.