AI exposure: Psychiatric Technicians
Care for individuals with mental or emotional conditions or disabilities, following the instructions of physicians or other health practitioners. Monitor patients' physical and emotional well-being and report to medical staff. May participate in rehabilitation and treatment programs, help with personal hygiene, and administer oral or injectable medications.
Reading this score
computedAt 11.6% of weighted task load, Psychiatric Technicians sits at the 17th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 69.3% 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 presence. Across this occupation's 16 tasks it averages 2.43 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, a person has to be the one present. This is the friction software does not erode. Where the point of the act is that a human is there, to care or to witness or to take responsibility in the room, automating the output misses what was being paid for.
The most exposed thing this job does is Issue medications from dispensary and maintain records in accordance with specified procedures, at 45.0%. The least is Administer oral medications or hypodermic injections, following physician's prescriptions and..., at 0.0%. A gap of 45.0% 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 76 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, 2 assisted and 11 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 | 1.24 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.77 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 2.43 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 1.99 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.94 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 2.11 | 0-3 |
Task by task
16 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issue medications from dispensary and maintain records in accordance with specified procedures. | 45.0% | 30.0% | 25.0% | 4.42 | exposed |
| Contact patients' relatives to arrange family conferences. | 40.0% | 35.0% | 25.0% | 3.40 | exposed |
| Develop or teach strategies to promote client wellness and independence. | 26.7% | 23.3% | 50.0% | 4.05 | exposed |
| Monitor patients' physical and emotional well-being and report unusual behavior or physical ailments to medical staff. | 25.0% | 50.0% | 25.0% | 4.30 | assisted |
| Interview new patients to complete admission forms, to assess their mental health status, or to obtain their mental health and treatment history. | 20.0% | 30.0% | 50.0% | 4.11 | assisted |
| Take and record measures of patients' physical condition, using devices such as thermometers or blood pressure gauges. | 11.1% | 30.6% | 58.3% | 4.29 | untouched |
| Observe and influence patients' behavior, communicating and interacting with them and teaching, counseling, or befriending them. | 8.3% | 16.7% | 75.0% | 4.29 | untouched |
| Encourage patients to develop work skills and to participate in social, recreational, or other therapeutic activities that enhance interpersonal skills or develop social relationships. | 6.7% | 18.3% | 75.0% | 4.50 | untouched |
| Train or instruct new employees on procedures to follow with psychiatric patients. | 5.0% | 20.0% | 75.0% | 3.94 | untouched |
| Lead prescribed individual or group therapy sessions as part of specific therapeutic procedures. | 3.3% | 21.7% | 75.0% | 4.46 | untouched |
| Collaborate with or assist doctors, psychologists, or rehabilitation therapists in working with patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities to treat, rehabilitate, and return patients to the community. | 3.0% | 13.7% | 83.3% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Provide nursing, psychiatric, or personal care to patients with cognitive, intellectual, or developmental disabilities. | 0.8% | 11.7% | 87.5% | 4.74 | untouched |
| Restrain violent, potentially violent, or suicidal patients by verbal or physical means as required. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.48 | untouched |
| Aid patients in performing tasks, such as bathing or keeping beds, clothing, or living areas clean. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.18 | untouched |
| Escort patients to medical appointments. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.93 | untouched |
| Administer oral medications or hypodermic injections, following physician's prescriptions and hospital procedures. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.59 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean. 2 task(s) lacked a usable O*NET weight and are shown but excluded from the weighting.
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.