EXPOSED
Chemical technicians spend their days preparing samples, running titrations and chromatographs, logging results into LIMS, and writing up routine test reports — the data-handling and reporting half is squarely in AI's wheelhouse, and the bench half is the part robotics and automated analyzers have been chipping at for two decades. What protects the modal technician is physical hands: weighing reagents, loading columns, fixing a leaking pump, sampling a live process line at 2 a.m. There is no license, no signature requirement, and no client who cares which technician ran the assay.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. An 11 reflects the split inside a single shift: the HPLC sequence, the LIMS entry, the COA draft, and the trend chart are all things software already does end-to-end, while glassware setup, reagent prep to volumetric accuracy, swapping a fouled GC inlet liner, and grab-sampling a reactor stream still need a person standing there — it sits above the automatable band because autosamplers still cannot troubleshoot a baseline drift or improvise when a sample arrives as a viscous sludge, and below 14 because the analytical methods themselves are written down in ASTM/USP procedures a machine can follow.
Some physical or field component. 12 is earned by work that is physical but in a room built for it — fume hoods, balance tables, controlled temperature and lighting — with excursions to plant sampling points, tank farms, and pilot lines where you're in Tyvek and a respirator; it doesn't reach 13+ because most of the day is a bench you designed the layout of, not an uncontrolled site.
No licence, no signature requirement. A 3 is right because nothing in your credential stack is legally required: ACS certification and a two-year degree are hiring preferences, the method validation and any regulatory signature belong to the chemist or QA manager above you, and your initials on a worksheet document chain of custody rather than assume personal liability for the result.
Anonymous artifact production. 5 sits at the top of the anonymous band because your internal reputation matters — the process engineer who trusts your numbers will call you first when a batch is off-spec — but the customer receiving the certificate of analysis sees a lab name and a method number, never yours, and swapping technicians between shifts costs the relationship nothing.
Meaningful discretion. 8 covers the real calls you make inside a fixed frame: deciding a control chart point is a genuine excursion versus a bad prep, choosing to rerun rather than report, spotting that a spike recovery is out of range before anyone downstream does — but the acceptance criteria, the OOS investigation trigger, and the disposition decision are written in the SOP and escalated upward, so you're not the one owning the ambiguous release call.
Has AI actually changed your work?