Job Check
Baristas
Prepare or serve specialty coffee or other beverages. Serve food such as baked goods or sandwiches to patrons.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Clean or sanitize work areas, utensils, or equipment.Mostly human for now
- 02Receive and process customer payments.Mostly human for now
- 03Prepare or serve hot or cold beverages, such as coffee, espresso drinks, blended coffees, or teas.Mostly human for now
- 04Take customer orders and convey them to other employees for preparation.Mostly human for now
- 05Clean service or seating areas.Mostly human for now
- 06Prepare or serve menu items, such as sandwiches or salads.Mostly human for now
- 07Wrap, label, or date food items for sale.Mostly human for now
- 08Check temperatures of freezers, refrigerators, or heating equipment to ensure proper functioning.Mostly human for now
- 09Take out garbage.Mostly human for now
- 10Describe menu items to customers, or suggest products that might appeal to them.AI could speed this up a lot
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
13%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 56% 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 89% 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.
- Clean or sanitize work areas, utensils, or equipment.
- Receive and process customer payments.
- Prepare or serve hot or cold beverages, such as coffee, espresso drinks, blended coffees, or teas.