Anthropic’s robot exposure index: today’s robots can do about three-quarters of US physical tasks, but are cheaper than people for just 0.3% of work
Anthropic researchers have published a robot exposure index that uses Claude to assess which job tasks existing robots can perform: robots can already do 74% of physical tasks in the US under some conditions, or 34% of all working time, but mostly in controlled settings, and are cheaper than human labor for just 0.3% of work today.
The study starts from the US O*NET database of about 900 occupations and roughly 19,000 job tasks. The team had Claude score tasks on physical, cognitive and interpersonal requirements to identify physical tasks that cannot be automated without robots, then had Claude search for deployments, commercial sales or demonstrations of specific robots to judge in which environments today’s robots can perform them. Exposure has four tiers: E0, a robot cannot perform the task; E1, only in a purpose-built robotic environment such as a factory line; E2, in a structured human workplace such as a logistics warehouse; E3, in an unstructured environment such as a city road. Robots here mean autonomous physical machines that sense and act; surgical machines fully controlled by a surgeon do not count.
Weighted by working time, 54% of all US job tasks are cognitive and interpersonal and 46% are physical. Existing robots can perform 74% of physical tasks under some conditions, equal to 34% of all working time, but mostly only in controlled settings; just 2% of physical tasks can be done by robots in unstructured environments, mostly driving by autonomous cars, tractors and other vehicles. Nine of the ten most exposed occupations are vehicle operators, with taxi drivers highest at an index of 2.2 (out of 3). Counting LLMs and robots together, about 81% of work is exposed to one or the other, versus about half for LLMs alone; the unexposed work is mostly highly interpersonal or needs fine physical skills today’s robots lack, as in nursing and general repair.
Workers exposed to robots look very different from those exposed to LLMs. Using 2020–2024 American Community Survey data, the most exposed fifth of workers, compared with unexposed workers, are 20 percentage points less likely to be female, 16 points more likely to be Hispanic and 55 points less likely to hold a bachelor’s degree or higher; they earn about $30 less per hour and face an unemployment rate more than twice as high.
Being able to do the work is not the same as being cheaper. The team had Claude estimate the full cost of the cited robots performing each task and compared it with labor costs, finding robots are cost-competitive for just 0.3% of work today. Packers and packagers are the largest such occupation: a set of robots that pack, move, inspect, label and seal goods costs over $2 million to buy and install and replaces the yearly work of about 14 workers, or about $45,000 a year per worker replaced, roughly $2,500 less than the $49,000 a packer costs. The US employs about 560,000 packers and packagers, and employment in the occupation has fallen 22% since 2015. For welders, dishwashers and cleaners, replacement robots cost several times as much as human workers.
At the roughly 3% annual decline in robot prices seen since the 1990s, making robots cost-competitive for 10% of today’s work would require costs to fall about 70%, taking around 40 years. After cost, capability is the main barrier: it limits about 70% of physical tasks, and half of all physical tasks would not be automated at scale until robots get better at touching and handling objects; the team estimates current regulations would bar robots from 14% of physical tasks and human preferences would hold them back from a quarter. A backtest shows that since 1977, jobs more exposed to robots saw greater wage and employment declines in later decades, and robots have gained the ability to do about 2% of the physical work they previously could not each year. Anthropic notes the cost estimates are approximate and that AI-powered robots could leapfrog its scale and learn work they cannot do today.
Sources
- What work can robots do? — Anthropic：Research（发表成果 · 网页）