{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/audio-and-video-technicians/", "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": "Audio and Video Technicians", "soc_code": "27-4011", "category": "Media", "us_employment": 70230, "median_annual_wage": 58100 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 13, "embodiment": 17, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 8 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "13 rather than 17 because load-in, rigging, cable runs and lav placement on bodies stay stubbornly manual, but the tasks that filled the rest of the shift — riding gain on a Q-SYS or DiGiCo auto-mixer, following a presenter with a PTZ camera, cleaning HVAC rumble out of a recording, cutting captions for the Zoom archive — are now defaults in the firmware or a one-click plugin, so the head count the room justifies is shrinking even though the work in the room is not.", "embodiment": "17 reflects that a normal week involves ladders and Genie lifts, truss and motor points overhead, pulling XLR and Cat6 through conduit and ceiling tile, and doing it in ballrooms, gyms, sanctuaries and outdoor tents whose ceiling height, power quality and RF environment you discover on arrival — the 3 points held back are the hours spent seated at a console or an editing timeline.", "liability_shield": "2 because nothing in the job requires a licence you can lose: OSHA fall-protection and ETCP rigging certification are employer or venue preferences, FCC coordination for wireless mics rides on the frequency holder not the tech, and when a truss point fails the general contractor and the venue absorb it, so no statute names you.", "trust_premium": "8 sits above anonymous work because the pastor, the meeting planner and the touring FOH engineer request the tech who already knows where the dimmer noise comes from and which input on the wall plate is dead, but the client bought the room and the gear — you are named on the crew sheet, not on the contract, and a replacement tech can be sent next Tuesday.", "judgment_accountability": "8 covers the calls that are genuinely yours and genuinely unscripted — reassigning wireless frequencies when the hotel next door fires up, deciding to run a redundant stream or reboot the encoder five minutes to air, cutting a channel that is feeding back with 400 people watching — but the consequence is a bad show or a lost recording, and the show file, plot and signal flow you are executing were mostly designed by someone else." }, "rationale": "The core of this job — hanging speakers, running cable, rigging mics on bodies, aiming projectors, chasing a buzzing ground loop twenty minutes before doors — is hands-on work in rooms that are never twice the same, and robotics is nowhere near it. What is eroding is the console-side and post-side work: auto-mixing, auto-tracking PTZ cameras, AI noise removal and dialogue isolation, automated captioning, and templated livestream switching are absorbing tasks that used to justify a second or third tech in the room. Score reflects the modal worker in corporate AV, houses of worship, schools, and venue crews rather than the elite touring or broadcast engineer tier.", "outlook": "Headcount per event shrinks as auto-mixing and auto-tracking cover the routine seats, but skilled load-in, rigging, and live-fix techs stay in demand and the pay gap between them and button-pushers widens.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State or municipal entertainment-rigging licensure of the kind Nevada and New York City already impose (NYC DOB rigging permits, Nevada's stagehand/rigging rules), plus insurer requirements that overhead points be signed off by an ETCP Certified Rigger or Entertainment Electrician before a venue's policy responds to a load. If ETCP certification moves from 'preferred' to a named condition in venue liability policies and public-assembly permits, a named human is legally on the hook for every flown speaker array and dimmer tie-in.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 6 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Temporary power distribution over a threshold (feeder tie-ins, generator drops for outdoor shows) being ruled electrician's-license work under state electrical codes rather than falling under entertainment exemptions — an interpretation fight already live in several state licensing boards.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Life-safety duties formally assigned to the audio operator in venue emergency plans — NFPA 72 mass-notification integration means the A1's console is the evacuation PA. If fire-code inspections and insurer walkthroughs start requiring a named, trained operator at the position whenever an assembly occupancy is full, the role owns a consequential call under ambiguity rather than just mixing.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Show-caller / A1 designated in contract as the person who stops the show (pyro, weather holds at outdoor festivals, crowd-crush calls). Post-Astroworld, promoter contracts and municipal event permits increasingly name an individual with stop-show authority; if that authority lands on the technical lead rather than a separate safety officer, accountability rises.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: if auto-mixing, PTZ auto-tracking, templated switching and AI dialogue cleanup absorb the routine tier fully, what remains is fault diagnosis in unrepeatable rooms, RF coordination in congested spectrum after the FCC's further 600/800 MHz reallocations, system tuning, and integrating equipment the vendor never intended to talk to each other. The residual job is denser in judgment even as headcount per room falls — score per remaining worker rises while worker count drops.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "IATSE and AFM contract language setting minimum crew counts and prohibiting automated substitution for named positions — the 2024 IATSE Basic Agreement fight over AI produced clauses on notification and consent; if local venue agreements add per-position crew floors tied to house size (as some Broadway and arena locals already have), buyers pay for humans by contract rather than by preference.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 } ], "ceiling_note": "Embodiment is already near ceiling at 17 and has nowhere to go. The trust premium here is thin and mostly invisible: corporate AV, school and house-of-worship buyers do not pay for a human tech as such, they pay for the show not failing, and will accept an automated box that mostly works. Union crew floors are the only real route and they cover a minority of these 70,230 workers. Nothing plausible lifts the ceiling for the single in-house tech at a megachurch or community college." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2019, "emp": 73960, "wage": 45910 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 62360, "wage": 47920 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 50590, "wage": 48820 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 56110, "wage": 50660 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 66700, "wage": 51640 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 70080, "wage": 54830 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 70230, "wage": 58100 } ], "from": 2019, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -5, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }