{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/surgeons-all-other/",
  "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": "Surgeons, All Other",
    "soc_code": "29-1249",
    "category": "Healthcare",
    "us_employment": 25140,
    "median_annual_wage": 414010
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 93,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 17,
    "embodiment": 20,
    "liability_shield": 20,
    "trust_premium": 18,
    "judgment_accountability": 18
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Dissecting through scarred or distorted planes, achieving hemostasis when a vessel tears unexpectedly, and deciding intraoperatively to convert laparoscopic to open are tasks with no digital substitute; 17 rather than 20 because pre-op imaging review, operative note dictation, CPT coding, and risk stratification are already being handed to models.",
    "embodiment": "You are scrubbed, gowned, and physically inside a body cavity whose anatomy varies patient to patient, working under retraction and bleeding — nothing about tying a knot deep in a pelvis or palpating tissue for tumor margins can happen off-site, which is why this sits at the ceiling.",
    "liability_shield": "State medical licensure, board certification, hospital credentialing and privileging by procedure, and a surgical consent form carrying your name mean malpractice exposure for a retained instrument or wrong-site case lands personally on you, not on any device manufacturer or software vendor.",
    "trust_premium": "Patients consent to a named surgeon after a conversation about mortality risk, and referring physicians send cases to a specific pair of hands; the 18 reflects that some emergent and trauma-adjacent cases arrive without any prior relationship at all.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Deciding whether an unresectable finding means aborting versus proceeding, when to accept a damage-control approach and come back another day, and how to weigh a frail patient's odds against no operation are calls made with incomplete information and no protocol to hide behind; slightly below ceiling because guidelines, tumor boards, and M&M review do constrain the space."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job is cutting, dissecting, controlling bleeding, and improvising inside a living body when anatomy doesn't match the textbook — surgical robots today are master-slave tools that amplify a surgeon's hands, not replace them. AI is already competitive on the screen-based periphery: reading imaging, drafting operative notes, coding procedures, and triaging pre-op risk. What it cannot do is stand at the table and own the decision to convert an approach mid-case, or sit with a family after a complication.",
  "outlook": "Through 2035 AI strips the documentation, imaging-prep, and billing load off surgeons while operative volume stays fully human; the practical change is more cases per surgeon, not fewer surgeons.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "As AI absorbs the screen-based periphery (imaging pre-reads, op-note drafting, CPT coding, pre-op risk stratification), the residual day becomes almost entirely intraoperative judgment and improvisation — the tier machines cannot touch. Watch for CMS/AMA acceptance of AI-drafted operative documentation as billable without surgeon re-dictation.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formal designation of a 'responsible surgeon of record' for autonomous or semi-autonomous robotic steps — e.g. FDA post-market requirements for supervised-autonomy devices (as flagged in FDA's discussion of adaptive AI/ML device oversight) naming a human owner of each intraoperative decision node.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Hospital credentialing or malpractice-insurer rules requiring disclosed consent when any autonomous robotic step is used, creating an explicit patient election of a fully human-performed operation.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Embodiment and liability_shield are already at 20; the composite is near ceiling and these levers move it by rounding at most. Nothing here changes the occupation's standing in practice."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 29590,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 25910,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 26370,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 24080,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 25140,
        "wage": 414010
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -15,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}