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Understanding how automation changes work — task by task, with the evidence shown and the uncertainty admitted.

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On this pageWhich technologiesHow it got hereMethod and sources
Occupations›Delivery rider / courier›How we know

Delivery rider / courier — how we know

The page itself gives the judgements. This one gives what they rest on: which technologies bear on the work, how the estimate moved since language models reached the public, and the method behind both.

Assessed
2026-09-10
With evidence
2/5
Verified events
2

Which technologies matter here#

Four separate signals. They are deliberately not added together — a job exposed to two technologies is not twice as exposed.

Process & self-service
Deciding what to deliver next and which way to go
Cognitive automation
Deciding what to deliver next and which way to goManaging the platform and the earnings
Driving & mobility
The ride through the cityThe last fifty metresLoading, recovering and supervising delivery robots
Physical automation
The last fifty metresLoading, recovering and supervising delivery robots

How it got here#

The index is not a static number. This is where it would have sat at each capability checkpoint since ChatGPT — reconstructed, and labelled as such.

Reconstructed · platform inferenceEstimated today for each past checkpoint — not measured at the time. 30 → 40.
1007550250
Uber Eats added Starship's sidewalk robots — about 3,000 units across 270+ locations — starting in Leeds and SheffieldMeituan received China's first nationwide low-altitude logistics operating certificate from the CAAC for its delivery drones, after 450,000+ drone orders on 53 routes by end-2024123456789not assessed
2022 H22024 H2Now

—— this stretch contains a verified event- - - no event in this stretch — reconstruction only0 = no task exposed, 100 = every task exposed

● 2 verified events for this occupation, plotted at the date it happened — the parts of the line near a marker are anchored to something checkable.

The cognitive half of this job was automated before 2022: the platform decides what to deliver and which way to go. So the baseline is 30 and almost everything left is the last fifty metres — a lift with a code, a gate, a sixth floor. Every alternative solves the ride and fails at the door, which is why this is one of the flattest curves here.

12022 H230General-purpose text generation reaches the public. Before this point, exposure came from automation that was already deployed — OCR, RPA, machine vision, self-checkout, dispatch algorithms. ChatGPT research preview (2022-11-30) ↗
22023 H131A general model that passes professional exams. First-draft quality crosses the threshold where professional work starts using it. GPT-4 (2023-03-14) ↗
32023 H232Vision input, long context and tool calling. Models can be pointed at documents and connected to systems, which is what moves process work rather than writing work. GPT-4 Turbo:128k 上下文、视觉、工具调用(DevDay) (2023-11-06) ↗
42024 H133The same capability gets much cheaper and faster. Nothing new becomes possible; a lot becomes affordable at volume, which is when deployment decisions change.
52024 H234Reasoning models that work through multi-step problems, and the first models that operate a computer by looking at the screen. The second one is what reaches software-operating jobs. OpenAI o1(推理);同期 Claude 的 computer use 进入公测 (2024-09-12) ↗
62025 H136Agents begin operating real software end to end rather than producing text for a person to paste. This is also when the first public reversals appear — organisations that automated and partly undid it. Claude 3.7 Sonnet 与 Claude Code:混合推理 + 命令行编码代理 (2025-02-24) ↗
72025 H237Long context and tool use become the default rather than a feature. Capability gains continue; the visible constraint shifts from what models can do to liability, procurement and cost. GPT-5(2025-08-07);Claude Opus 4.5(2025-11-24) (2025-08-07) ↗
82026 H139Long-horizon agents land inside specific industry workflows. Adoption becomes sector-specific rather than general. GPT-5.5:「专为实际工作打造」 (2026-04-23) ↗
9Now40The current assessment — this point is the impact index published on the occupation's page, so the curve is anchored to a number the site already stands behind. Worth noting for the flat curves: in the same weeks, a research preview of a shared specification for AI agents to operate physical devices was opened to research labs and manufacturers. That is the first capability class pointed at the physical occupations whose lines here barely move. GPT-6 Astra(2026-09-03);Claude Fable 5.1 / Mythos 5.1(2026-09-01);Model Hardware Standard 研究预览(2026-08-27) (2026-09-03) ↗

A flat line is not a forecast of safety. It says which tasks automation has reached so far — the occupations that moved least here are the ones where the constraint is physical or regulatory, and both of those can change.

Method and sources#

Assessment date
2026-09-10
Basis of the task judgements
2 evidence-backed · 3 platform inference · 0 not enough evidence
Verified events
2

How we assess an occupation →

← Back to Delivery rider / courierThe other layer: every task, one by one →