Job Check
Cooks, Restaurant
Prepare, season, and cook dishes such as soups, meats, vegetables, or desserts in restaurants. May order supplies, keep records and accounts, price items on menu, or plan menu.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Ensure food is stored and cooked at correct temperature by regulating temperature of ovens, broilers, grills, and roasters.Mostly human for now
- 02Inspect and clean food preparation areas, such as equipment, work surfaces, and serving areas, to ensure safe and sanitary food-handling practices.Mostly human for now
- 03Portion, arrange, and garnish food, and serve food to waiters or patrons.Mostly human for now
- 04Ensure freshness of food and ingredients by checking for quality, keeping track of old and new items, and rotating stock.Mostly human for now
- 05Season and cook food according to recipes or personal judgment and experience.Mostly human for now
- 06Coordinate and supervise work of kitchen staff.Mostly human for now
- 07Bake, roast, broil, and steam meats, fish, vegetables, and other foods.Mostly human for now
- 08Weigh, measure, and mix ingredients according to recipes or personal judgment, using various kitchen utensils and equipment.Mostly human for now
- 09Turn or stir foods to ensure even cooking.Mostly human for now
- 10Observe and test foods to determine if they have been cooked sufficiently, using methods such as tasting, smelling, or piercing them with utensils.Mostly human for now
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 loss1%of this job’s work time goes to tasks that people already do with Claude at work, counting tasks where AI only helps as half (2026).Anthropic, 2026
10%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 59% 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 80% 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.
- Ensure food is stored and cooked at correct temperature by regulating temperature of ovens, broilers, grills, and roasters.
- Inspect and clean food preparation areas, such as equipment, work surfaces, and serving areas, to ensure safe and sanitary food-handling practices.
- Portion, arrange, and garnish food, and serve food to waiters or patrons.