AI exposure: Occupational Therapy Aides
Under close supervision of an occupational therapist or occupational therapy assistant, perform only delegated, selected, or routine tasks in specific situations. These duties include preparing patient and treatment room.
Reading this score
computedAt 12.3% of weighted task load, Occupational Therapy Aides sits at the 19th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 68.6% 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 15 tasks it averages 2.10 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 Perform clerical, administrative, and secretarial duties, at 36.3%. The least is Accompany patients on outings, providing transportation when necessary, at 0.0%. A gap of 36.3% 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 healthcare support occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 19 roles in the group is 11.4%, and only 6 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 15 tasks, 1 are currently banded exposed, 4 assisted and 10 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 | 1.21 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.07 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.06 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.83 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.84 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.10 | 0-3 |
Task by task
15 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perform clerical, administrative, and secretarial duties, such as answering phones, restocking and ordering supplies, filling out paperwork, and scheduling appointments. | 36.3% | 22.0% | 41.7% | 3.96 | exposed |
| Observe patients' attendance, progress, attitudes, and accomplishments and record and maintain information in client records. | 35.0% | 40.0% | 25.0% | 4.34 | assisted |
| Report to supervisors or therapists, verbally or in writing, on patients' progress, attitudes, attendance, and accomplishments. | 30.0% | 45.0% | 25.0% | 4.45 | assisted |
| Evaluate the living skills and capacities of clients with physical, developmental, or mental health disabilities. | 16.7% | 33.3% | 50.0% | 4.38 | assisted |
| Assist educational specialists or clinical psychologists in administering situational or diagnostic tests to measure client's abilities or progress. | 16.7% | 33.3% | 50.0% | 3.08 | assisted |
| Manage intradepartmental infection control and equipment security. | 15.0% | 22.5% | 62.5% | 4.00 | untouched |
| Encourage patients and attend to their physical needs to facilitate the attainment of therapeutic goals. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.49 | untouched |
| Assist occupational therapists in planning, implementing, and administering therapy programs to restore, reinforce, and enhance performance, using selected activities and special equipment. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.11 | untouched |
| Instruct patients and families in work, social, and living skills, the care and use of adaptive equipment, and other skills to facilitate home and work adjustment to disability. | 5.8% | 19.2% | 75.0% | 4.12 | untouched |
| Demonstrate therapy techniques, such as manual and creative arts and games. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 4.01 | untouched |
| Prepare and maintain work area, materials, and equipment and maintain inventory of treatment and educational supplies. | 3.7% | 4.6% | 91.7% | 4.31 | untouched |
| Transport patients to and from the occupational therapy work area. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.13 | untouched |
| Supervise patients in choosing and completing work assignments or arts and crafts projects. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.78 | untouched |
| Adjust and repair assistive devices and make adaptive changes to other equipment and to environments. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.55 | untouched |
| Accompany patients on outings, providing transportation when necessary. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.34 | 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.