AI exposure: Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders
Operate or tend food or tobacco roasting, baking, or drying equipment, including hearth ovens, kiln driers, roasters, char kilns, and vacuum drying equipment.
Reading this score
computedAt 19.6% of weighted task load, Food and Tobacco Roasting, Baking, and Drying Machine Operators and Tenders sits at the 34th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 69.5% 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 embodiment. Across this occupation's 19 tasks it averages 2.61 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Record production data, at 73.3%. The least is Push racks or carts to transfer products to storage, cooling stations, or the next stage of..., at 0.0%. A gap of 73.3% 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 production occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 107 roles in the group is 16.1%, and only 34 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 19 tasks, 6 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 13 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 | 0.97 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.61 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.58 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.58 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.87 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.89 | 0-3 |
Task by task
19 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record production data, such as weight and amount of product processed, type of product, and time and temperature of processing. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.34 | exposed |
| Read work orders to determine quantities and types of products to be baked, dried, or roasted. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 4.05 | exposed |
| Observe temperature, humidity, pressure gauges, and product samples and adjust controls, such as thermostats and valves, to maintain prescribed operating conditions for specific stages. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.36 | exposed |
| Observe flow of materials and listen for machine malfunctions, such as jamming or spillage, and notify supervisors if corrective actions fail. | 35.4% | 27.1% | 37.5% | 4.36 | exposed |
| Set temperature and time controls, light ovens, burners, driers, or roasters, and start equipment, such as conveyors, cylinders, blowers, driers, or pumps. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 4.57 | exposed |
| Open valves, gates, or chutes or use shovels to load or remove products from ovens or other equipment. | 33.3% | 16.7% | 50.0% | 4.08 | exposed |
| Observe, feel, taste, or otherwise examine products during and after processing to ensure conformance to standards. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.58 | untouched |
| Test products for moisture content, using moisture meters. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.35 | untouched |
| Weigh or measure products, using scale hoppers or scale conveyors. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.33 | untouched |
| Operate or tend equipment that roasts, bakes, dries, or cures food items such as cocoa and coffee beans, grains, nuts, and bakery products. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.17 | untouched |
| Signal coworkers to synchronize flow of materials. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Fill or remove product from trays, carts, hoppers, or equipment, using scoops, peels, or shovels, or by hand. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.92 | untouched |
| Take product samples during or after processing for laboratory analyses. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.58 | untouched |
| Clear or dislodge blockages in bins, screens, or other equipment, using poles, brushes, or mallets. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Start conveyors to move roasted grain to cooling pans and agitate grain with rakes as blowers force air through perforated bottoms of pans. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.11 | untouched |
| Clean equipment with steam, hot water, and hoses. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.00 | untouched |
| Smooth out products in bins, pans, trays, or conveyors, using rakes or shovels. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.99 | untouched |
| Install equipment, such as spray units, cutting blades, or screens, using hand tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.92 | untouched |
| Push racks or carts to transfer products to storage, cooling stations, or the next stage of processing. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.82 | 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.