How the AI number works

The big number

Every career card on Careermash carries one large number: AI EXPOSURE TODAY. It is a Careermash index from 0 to 100 of how exposed this job's everyday tasks are to AI today. Higher means more exposed.

It is an estimate, not a direct measurement of how much people in this job use AI, and not a prediction. A high score does not mean the job is disappearing. It means more of the routine parts of the work are exposed to AI, so the parts a person is paid for may be shifting.

Where the number comes from

The exposure index blends published AI usage research, Anthropic and OpenAI 2026, with our own UK reviews of labour market moats, robotics evolution and relevant scientific developments.

The AI usage research looks at real world AI usage. Careermash matches each career to that research, usually by keyword or subject area, and lowers the result where the work is protected, for example by physical, personal or legal requirements. The index is therefore an estimate for each job, not a direct measurement of use in that job.

The rest of the blend is ours: a UK specific review of the legal and structural protections around each profession, which differ from the US labour market the underlying research was built in, plus a per career look at whether robotics could plausibly take on the physical side of the work, and when.

The door: how hard the career is to enter

Alongside exposure, every card shows THE DOOR · ENTRY DIFFICULTY TODAY: how hard that career is to get into today, graded A (easy) to E (extremely hard). It is a Careermash rule of thumb built from our AI exposure index and the job's moat class. It is not a forecast and not a count of job openings.

The 20 year scenario, and why it stays honest

Cards also show a 20 year figure, labelled as a Careermash scenario, not a forecast. It is a rule of thumb built from our exposure index and the job's moat class, and it is the one part of the card that is explicitly about the future.

Everywhere else, the site sticks to present tense: how exposed a job is today, not what it might do next.

What the number is not

It never says a job will vanish. It never says a person should or should not pursue it. It does not rank careers by how "safe" they are, because chasing the single safest score is not the point: understanding a real job, with real numbers, is.

Where a career's structural protection, its moat, has not yet been reviewed, the card says MOAT NOT YET CLASSIFIED rather than guessing. The exposure score is still real either way. See the moat register for what that plate does and does not mean.

Every change is on the record

Careermash keeps a permanent, public ledger of every change to the measurement or to any wording that carries a claim. Nothing is edited quietly or restated without a trace. The current ledger, and the full methodology, sit on the verdict page of every career.