{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/earth-drillers-except-oil-and-gas/",
  "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": "Earth Drillers, Except Oil and Gas",
    "soc_code": "47-5023",
    "category": "Construction",
    "us_employment": 19450,
    "median_annual_wage": 60190
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 67,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": true,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 18,
    "embodiment": 19,
    "liability_shield": 10,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 12
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Tripping 20-foot rods by hand signals, backing a rig onto a slope and leveling with outriggers, feeling the rotary head load change when the bit hits refusal, and pulling a stuck string are decisions made through the drill's feedback in your hands — an 18 rather than 20 only because the logging, footage tallies, and lithology description that follow the shift are already going into software.",
    "embodiment": "You are outdoors on unimproved ground in whatever weather, handling casing, mud pumps, and augers in an environment that changes with every borehole — a 19 because there is no version of this work that happens away from the rig, with the fraction of a point reflecting hours spent in the truck cab moving between sites.",
    "liability_shield": "Water-well drilling licences and signed well completion reports in most states are a genuine statutory tie to a named person, but geotech and construction bores are frequently drilled by crew members working under a company's or a PE's licence, so the shield covers a portion of the trade rather than every driller — hence 10, not 15.",
    "trust_premium": "Repeat work from the same geotech firm, farm customer, or general contractor comes from your rig showing up and the hole coming in on depth, not from a relationship a client would refuse to substitute — an 8 because rural well drillers do get called back by name while bid-let construction drilling is largely interchangeable.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You decide when to case off a caving zone, when to switch from air to mud, and when to stop and call the engineer because the standard penetration numbers don't match the boring plan — real calls with cost and contamination consequences, but made inside a permitted well design or a geotechnical boring program written by someone else, which caps it at 12."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job — setting up a rig on uneven ground, tripping pipe, reading cuttings and bit behavior to judge what formation you're in, casing and grouting a water well, keeping a geotechnical bore straight — is physical, site-specific work that language models cannot touch and current robotics cannot do unsupervised. AI will eat the paperwork around it: well logs, boring logs, permit forms, driller's reports, and preliminary lithology interpretation from sensor data. Most states license water-well drillers and require signed well completion reports, which gives a real if narrow regulatory shield; drillers on construction and geotech crews often work under someone else's license.",
  "outlook": "Demand tracks groundwater, infrastructure and environmental drilling rather than AI, so headcount holds; rigs get more instrumented and one licensed driller supervises more automated hardware, shifting the job toward fewer, higher-skill seats.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State licensing boards extending water-well driller licensure to geotechnical and environmental (monitoring well) boring, with the licensed driller personally signing the completion/abandonment log — several states (e.g. Minnesota, Ohio) already require licensed drillers for monitoring wells; broader adoption plus a rule that AI-generated lithology logs must be countersigned by the license holder would deepen the shield",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Groundwater protection rules tying grout/seal verification and abandonment sign-off to a named licensed individual rather than the contracting firm, as EPA UIC Class V program guidance and state well-abandonment statutes already do in patches",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Task-mix shift as automated rod handlers and autodrillers (already sold on larger sonic and rotary rigs) take the routine tripping and feed-rate work, leaving the driller as the person who calls formation changes, artesian/gas encounters, borehole instability and stop-work decisions — the remaining job is the judgment tier",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Utility-strike liability regimes (state 811/one-call enforcement, and damage-prevention rules following high-profile bore strikes) that name the driller/operator as the party accountable for the decision to advance the hole after a locate discrepancy",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Work shifting further toward constrained-access sites — limited-access rigs inside basements, on slopes, over water, in contaminated soil requiring HAZWOPER — where remote or autonomous setup is furthest from viable",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route: buyers are general contractors, engineering firms and municipalities purchasing a hole to spec at the lowest responsive bid. Nobody pays extra for a human driller as such, and no certification scheme is likely to create that willingness. task_resistance is already near ceiling and cannot rise meaningfully."
  },
  "adjudication": {
    "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict",
    "outcome": "corroborated",
    "run_totals": [
      67,
      67
    ],
    "run_verdicts": [
      "SAFE",
      "SAFE"
    ]
  },
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 15800,
        "wage": 48250
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 19010,
        "wage": 51740
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 18010,
        "wage": 56660
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 17410,
        "wage": 59600
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 19450,
        "wage": 60190
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 23.1,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}