EXPOSED
This catch-all covers mine, quarry, and well-site workers who don't fit the named extraction titles: rigging drill strings, tending pumps and conveyors, handling explosives support, servicing equipment in pits, tunnels, and wellpads. Almost none of that is text-on-a-screen work, so language AI barely touches it — but mining is one of the few sectors where physical automation is genuinely funded and shipping: autonomous haulage, remote-operated drills, and automated longwall systems have already cut headcount at large operators. The exposure here is capital-intensive robotics and consolidation, not chatbots, and MSHA/blasting certifications give some regulatory friction but no personal sign-off liability.
Tasks largely resist digitisation. Rigging and breaking out drill string, chaining down casing, clearing a jammed conveyor tail pulley, re-packing a mud pump — these are irregular, feel-dependent jobs on equipment that is never in the same position twice, which is why they sit at 15 rather than in the automatable band; the 5 points shaved off reflect that the repetitive haul-and-drill cycles adjacent to your work are already running driverless at Pilbara and Nevada-scale operations.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. An 18 is what you get when the workplace is a wellpad in freezing wind, a quarry bench after rain, or an underground drift with ground control, ventilation, and confined-space entry all in play — you are handling loads by hand in the presence of moving iron and pressurized fluid, and only the fact that some of this happens on a fixed, engineered site rather than pure open terrain keeps it off 20.
Certification preferred, not legally required. MSHA Part 46/48 new-miner and annual refresher training and, where you handle shot support, ATF explosives possessor and state blaster licensing create real hiring friction — but none of that is a licence you personally sign work under; the mine foreman, competent person, and blaster-in-charge carry the citation and the sign-off, which caps you at 6 instead of the 11+ a personally liable licence-holder earns.
Anonymous artifact production. Your output is tonnage, footage, and uptime measured at the scale house or the pump chart — the operator can swap a contract crew mid-shift without a customer noticing, and the 4 rather than 0 reflects only that the shift boss knows which hands he wants on a tricky trip-out or a hot bolt-up.
Meaningful discretion. An 8 recognizes the calls you genuinely own — pulling back when the ground sounds wrong, refusing to work under an unsupported back, deciding a hoist rope or a wire sling is done — but most of the shift runs on written JSAs, permit-to-work, LOTO steps, and MSHA-mandated workplace exams, and anything ambiguous and expensive escalates to the foreman or engineer rather than resolving in your hands.
Has AI actually changed your work?