Not all work is equally vulnerable. Tasks that are routine, predictable, and rules-based face the highest automation risk. Data entry, basic accounting, assembly-line work, and document processing are already being transformed.

Tasks needing creativity, empathy, and complex judgment stay hard to automate. A robot can weld car frames but cannot cross a cluttered construction site or comfort a grieving patient.

The key insight: jobs are bundles of tasks. Most jobs mix automatable and non-automatable work, so automation usually transforms a role rather than erasing it.