{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/cooks-private-household/", "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": "Cooks, Private Household", "soc_code": "35-2013", "category": "Food", "us_employment": 1100, "median_annual_wage": 47940 }, "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "contested": false, "near_boundary": true, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 17, "embodiment": 19, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 17, "judgment_accountability": 11 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Selecting fish at a market by smell, breaking down a whole chicken, judging when a sauce has broken and correcting it, and holding a four-course service to a host's shifting arrival time are physical and sensory judgments no software executes — only the ordering lists and macro counts have moved off the cook's plate, which is why this sits at 17 rather than mid-range.", "embodiment": "You work standing in a stranger's domestic kitchen with unfamiliar burners, dull knives, a temperamental oven and a toddler underfoot, carrying groceries in and hauling stock pots — an uncontrolled, unstandardised space that no kitchen robotics pilot targets, hence 19 rather than the 13-15 of a fixed commercial line.", "liability_shield": "No state licences private household cooks; a ServSafe card or food handler permit is at most a hiring preference and the employer, not a licensing board, is who removes you — so 3 reflects a real but non-statutory food-safety expectation, not a protected credential.", "trust_premium": "Clients hire you because you hold the keys, know which child's peanut allergy is anaphylactic, and cook around a spouse's chemotherapy nausea; that intimacy is the product, though it stops just short of 20 because household staff are still replaced when a family relocates or economises.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide substitutions when the fishmonger is out, whether reheated stock is still safe, and how to feed six unexpected guests from what's in the pantry — genuine discretion inside a brief the employer sets, which is why this is 11 and not the 15+ of someone owning consequential calls no one else reviews." }, "rationale": "The core of this job — buying produce, butchering, tasting, adjusting heat, plating on someone else's timeline in someone else's kitchen — is manual work in a space no robot is deployed in. AI takes over the paperwork edges: menu ideation, recipe scaling, nutrition math, grocery lists, and dietary-restriction cross-checks. What buyers actually pay for is a trusted person in their home who knows the family's allergies, moods, and preferences and is accountable when a dinner party goes sideways.", "outlook": "Demand tracks high-net-worth household spending, not AI capability — the occupation stays small and secure, with the planning and shopping-list side of the day shrinking to minutes.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Growth of the agency-placed private chef market where households pay a premium explicitly for vetted, background-checked, discreet in-home staff (NDAs, live-in arrangements) — already standard practice at estate-staffing agencies serving UHNW clients; wider adoption of formal confidentiality contracts plus allergy-liability clauses makes the human-in-my-home premium contractual rather than sentimental.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If private chefs increasingly take on medically-directed cooking — renal, ketogenic-for-epilepsy, oncology, severe multi-allergen households — under a physician's or dietitian's care plan, the chef owns the on-the-spot call when an ingredient substitution or cross-contact risk arises. Watch for household employment contracts naming the chef as responsible for allergen protocol, and insurers writing household-staff liability endorsements.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Only a narrow route: some jurisdictions require a food-handler or food-manager certificate (e.g. ServSafe Manager, mandated in Texas and Illinois for commercial settings) and a few localities extend food-safety permitting to paid in-home meal preparation and cottage-food-style sales. Extension of certificate-and-permit requirements to private household cooking would raise this slightly, but a certificate is not personal professional liability with signature authority.", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Already near the practical ceiling. Embodiment (19) and task_resistance (17) cannot go higher, and the paperwork tier is thin enough that automating it barely shifts the task mix. The real fragility is not AI but demand: 1,100 workers in a discretionary luxury category, exposed to household budgets and to meal-delivery substitution, not to model capability. No licensing body exists for private household cooks and none is being organized, so liability_shield stays structurally low." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 67, 67 ], "run_verdicts": [ "SAFE", "SAFE" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 500, "wage": 38280 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 460, "wage": 37590 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 390, "wage": 37870 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 320, "wage": 32630 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 440, "wage": 42920 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 610, "wage": 38570 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 740, "wage": 42590 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 900, "wage": 44530 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 1100, "wage": 47940 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 120, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }