{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/coin-vending-and-amusement-machine-servicers-and-repairers/", "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": "Coin, Vending, and Amusement Machine Servicers and Repairers", "soc_code": "49-9091", "category": "Trades", "us_employment": 26410, "median_annual_wage": 47450 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 52, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 15, "embodiment": 17, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 9 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Pulling a jammed bill from a validator's transport path, re-timing a coin mech, brazing a leaking refrigerant line in a hallway, and leveling a machine on a warped breakroom floor are tasks no software executes; the 15 rather than 18 reflects that the fault-finding half of your day — figuring out which board or motor failed — is increasingly handed to you by telemetry before you arrive.", "embodiment": "You are in a van most of the day, then kneeling behind machines in arcade back rooms, hospital corridors, and truck-stop vestibules, lifting glass fronts, handling compressors and 30-pound coin bags in whatever heat, cold, or clearance the site gives you — a 17 rather than 20 only because the sites are indoors and you are not on a roof or in a trench.", "liability_shield": "No state licence gates this trade; the exceptions are narrow — an EPA 608 card to touch refrigerant and, in most states, a gaming licence or registration to service slot and route amusement devices — and neither makes you personally liable for the machine's operation the way a signed inspection would.", "trust_premium": "Route accounts stick with the tech who knows which validator in that plant eats crumpled ones and shows up before the lunch rush, and location owners handing you their cash want a face they recognize — but the vending company holds the contract and the machine, so the relationship transfers when you leave.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide on the spot whether to swap a board, rebuild the mech, or pull the machine, and you reconcile cash discrepancies that can look like theft — real calls, but made against known fault codes, warranty rules, and route sheets rather than genuinely ambiguous stakes." }, "rationale": "The core of this job — driving a route, opening machines, replacing bill validators and coin mechs, clearing jams, swapping compressors, restocking and collecting cash — is hands-on work in dozens of uncontrolled locations, which no current robot does. What AI and connected hardware do erode is the diagnostic and logistics layer: telemetry-equipped machines now report their own faults, sales, and stock levels, so route planning, service dispatch, and paperwork increasingly happen without a human deciding. The bigger threat to headcount is cashless payment and remote monitoring shrinking the number of visits per machine, not a machine replacing the technician on site.", "outlook": "Fewer technicians covering more machines each: remote monitoring kills the routine check-in visit while refrigeration, cashless hardware, and amusement/gaming work keep the skilled tier employed.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State gaming-board licensing of technicians extended to the new legal 'skill game' / historical-horse-racing terminal fleets (Pennsylvania's pending skill-game regulation bills, Virginia's 2024-25 skill-game framework, Kentucky HHR rules). Slot-route jurisdictions already require a personally licensed, badged technician to break a machine's evidence seal and log the RAM clear; if that regime covers the amusement-machine population broadly, a named licensed human becomes legally necessary for each intervention.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 6 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Tighter enforcement of EPA Section 608 certification for refrigerant work on refrigerated vendors and coolers, plus the 2024-25 AIM Act HFC transition pushing routes onto R-290 propane equipment, which carries flammable-refrigerant handling rules (UL 60335-2-89) and insurer requirements that only a certified technician open the sealed system. Certification is individual and revocable, not corporate.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: as telemetry, cashless payment and micro-market conversion strip out the routine restock-and-collect visits, the residual visit is the one telemetry could not resolve — intermittent bill-validator faults, board-level and sealed-system repair, vandalism and water damage in an unmapped location. Two genuine tiers exist here and the lower one is the one being removed.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Cash-and-compliance accountability formalized: if state gaming or lottery regulators require the servicing technician to personally attest meter readings, seal integrity and payout-percentage configuration (as Nevada/Pennsylvania slot-route rules already do), the technician owns a consequential call under ambiguity — declaring a machine tampered versus faulty — with license consequences.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "No route upward from capability change, but the environment can get harder to standardize: heavier R-290 and payment-hardware retrofit mandates plus continued vandalism/water-damage caseload keep the work in uncontrolled sites. This holds the score rather than raising it.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "Trust premium is omitted deliberately: the buyer is a vending operator or location owner buying uptime per machine, and no observable segment pays extra for a human servicer as such. Even with full gaming-style licensing, the headcount driver stays visits-per-machine, which cashless payment and telemetry keep cutting — so the realistic ceiling here is roughly the mid-60s, and it is a smaller occupation at a higher score rather than a protected one." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 34010, "wage": 33690 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 32920, "wage": 34560 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 31370, "wage": 35420 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 25080, "wage": 37580 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 27540, "wage": 39040 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 35790, "wage": 39690 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 36100, "wage": 44980 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 28260, "wage": 47350 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 26410, "wage": 47450 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -22.3, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "automotive-service-technicians-and-mechanics", "title": "Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "median_wage": 50620, "overlap": 76, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Learning Strategies", "Installation", "Critical Thinking" ] }, { "slug": "medical-equipment-repairers", "title": "Medical Equipment Repairers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 64, "median_wage": 61660, "overlap": 75, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Mathematics", "Repairing", "Instructing" ] }, { "slug": "farm-equipment-mechanics-and-service-technicians", "title": "Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "median_wage": 56550, "overlap": 73, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Equipment Maintenance", "Learning Strategies", "Equipment Selection" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }