Job Check
Anesthesiologists
Administer anesthetics and analgesics for pain management prior to, during, or after surgery.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Examine patient, obtain medical history, and use diagnostic tests to determine risk during surgical, obstetrical, and other medical procedures.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 02Administer anesthetic or sedation during medical procedures, using local, intravenous, spinal, or caudal methods.Mostly human for now
- 03Record type and amount of anesthesia and patient condition throughout procedure.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 04Monitor patient before, during, and after anesthesia and counteract adverse reactions or complications.Mostly human for now
- 05Decide when patients have recovered or stabilized enough to be sent to another room or ward or to be sent home following outpatient surgery.Mostly human for now
- 06Coordinate administration of anesthetics with surgeons during operation.Mostly human for now
- 07Position patient on operating table to maximize patient comfort and surgical accessibility.Mostly human for now
- 08Coordinate and direct work of nurses, medical technicians, and other health care providers.Mostly human for now
- 09Provide and maintain life support and airway management and help prepare patients for emergency surgery.Mostly human for now
- 10Confer with other medical professionals to determine type and method of anesthetic or sedation to render patient insensible to pain.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
25%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 6% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 56% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Administer anesthetic or sedation during medical procedures, using local, intravenous, spinal, or caudal methods.
- Monitor patient before, during, and after anesthesia and counteract adverse reactions or complications.
- Decide when patients have recovered or stabilized enough to be sent to another room or ward or to be sent home following outpatient surgery.