{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/astronomers/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Astronomers", "soc_code": "19-2011", "category": "Science", "us_employment": 2120, "median_annual_wage": 128820 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 37, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 10, "embodiment": 5, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Reduction pipelines, aperture photometry, redshift fitting and cross-matching against Gaia/SDSS catalogs are already scripted and increasingly ML-driven, but writing a competitive TAC or NASA ADAP proposal, choosing the observing strategy that survives moonlight and weather constraints, and diagnosing an unexpected instrumental systematic in the data still take a person who knows the hardware — that mix of automatable analysis over irreplaceable framing is why this lands at 10 rather than 5 or 15.", "embodiment": "Most astronomers work from an office and a queue-scheduled interface, with the physical component limited to observing runs at Kitt Peak or Mauna Kea, cryostat and detector work for instrument builders, and occasional lab alignment — real but episodic and confined to controlled domes, which is why it sits at 5 rather than the 12+ of someone whose week is spent on a mountain.", "liability_shield": "There is no state licence, no board certification, and no stamped deliverable in astronomy; the only formal gates are a PhD and peer review, and a retraction damages a reputation rather than triggering legal exposure — hence 1 rather than 0, since institutional review boards and export-control rules touch some instrument and defense-adjacent work.", "trust_premium": "Papers are judged on data and method by anonymous referees, and citation counts do not care who you are, but proposal panels, long-running collaborations like LSST or ALMA working groups, and graduate advising all run on named reputation and personal standing — enough relational weight for 8, well short of a practice where clients hire you specifically.", "judgment_accountability": "When you claim a planet in the habitable zone, a 5-sigma detection at the edge of your noise floor, or a cosmological parameter that disagrees with Planck, you personally decide whether the systematics are understood well enough to publish, and that call is unfalsifiable in the moment and career-defining afterward — 13 rather than higher only because no one's safety or money rides on the answer." }, "rationale": "Astronomy is largely screen work — pipeline code, photometry and spectral fitting, catalog cross-matching, literature review, and manuscript drafting — and AI already does credible versions of most of it, with ML classifiers outperforming humans on transient and morphology sorting. What resists is deciding which questions are worth years of telescope time, designing and commissioning instruments, defending survey systematics, and owning the claim when a result is extraordinary. There is no licensure and no signature requirement; the field's real constraint is that only ~2,000 US positions exist and they are gated by grants and faculty lines, not by automation.", "outlook": "By 2035 AI will write most of the code and much of the prose in astronomy papers, and the surviving jobs will concentrate in instrumentation, survey calibration, and collaboration leadership — in a field whose headcount is set by federal grant budgets more than by AI.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift is genuine here: as ML pipelines absorb photometry, transient triage and catalog cross-matching (already the norm on ZTF/Rubin brokers), the residual job becomes instrument commissioning, systematics forensics on survey data, and TAC-level science-case design. If Rubin/Roman-era systematics work becomes the dominant funded activity — as LSST DESC's systematics working groups suggest — the day's work is the tier AI cannot close.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If journals and collaborations formalize a named-human 'analysis guarantor' for extraordinary claims — the way AAS journals already require author-contribution statements and some collaborations require internal review before publication, and as astro-ph adopts arXiv's policy of rejecting undisclosed AI-generated submissions — the person who signs off on a detection claim owns it explicitly.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Time-allocation committees and instrument-review boards (NASA TAC, NSF/NOIRLab, ESO OPC) adopting explicit rules that AI-drafted proposals must have a named human PI accountable for the science case, and barring AI from panel review, keeps the consequential allocation calls with identified humans.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "If a larger share of positions shift toward instrument build, integration and on-mountain commissioning — adaptive-optics alignment, cryostat and detector work, Rubin/ELT/Roman hardware — the physical, unpredictable-environment fraction of the occupation rises. This is a real reallocation of NSF/NASA money toward facilities, not a new capability.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "No route to a liability shield: there is no astronomy licensure, no statutory signature, and no injured party with standing to sue over a misfit spectrum. Trust premium is also close to capped — buyers are grant panels and other astronomers, not consumers who would pay extra for a human. The binding constraint on this occupation was never automation; it is the ~2,000 grant- and faculty-gated positions, so headcount can fall on flat NSF budgets regardless of any score here." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 37, 36 ], "run_verdicts": [ "EXPOSED", "EXPOSED" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 2020, "wage": 100590 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 2160, "wage": 105680 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 2070, "wage": 114590 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 1910, "wage": 119730 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 1930, "wage": 128160 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 2160, "wage": 128330 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 2080, "wage": 127930 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 1560, "wage": 132170 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 2120, "wage": 128820 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 5, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "aerospace-engineers", "title": "Aerospace Engineers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "median_wage": 134960, "overlap": 70, "skills_to_close": [ "Quality Control Analysis", "Operations Analysis", "Technology Design", "Operations Monitoring" ] }, { "slug": "engineers-all-other", "title": "Engineers, All Other", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "median_wage": 122930, "overlap": 66, "skills_to_close": [ "Quality Control Analysis", "Troubleshooting", "Operations Monitoring", "Operation and Control" ] }, { "slug": "nuclear-engineers", "title": "Nuclear Engineers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 57, "median_wage": 133970, "overlap": 63, "skills_to_close": [ "Troubleshooting", "Operations Monitoring", "Quality Control Analysis", "Operations Analysis" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }