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

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You are reading as:I have a jobI am studyingI run a companyI am building something
On this pageWhich technologiesHow it got hereMethod and sources
Occupations›Mechanical engineer›How we know

Mechanical engineer — 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
2026-09-30
With evidence
2/6
Verified events
7

Which technologies matter here#

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

Cognitive automation
Requirements and conceptCAD modelling and generative designSimulation and analysisPrototypes, testing and failure investigationSafety, compliance and sign-off
Physical automation
Prototypes, testing and failure investigationManufacturing and equipment integration
Process & self-service
Safety, compliance and sign-offManufacturing and equipment integration

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. 20 → 36.
1007550250
Mechanical engineering employment will grow 11 percent from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, as factories add automation, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimatedOn FEABench, AI models produced executable calls to a commercial simulation tool 88% of the time but almost never computed a result within 10% of the correct answerGPT-4 wrote CAD scripts that compiled 96.5% of the time on CADPrompt, 200 design prompts, while the researchers note a compiled script may not meet the specified requirementsMultimodal AI models struggled to retrieve the relevant rules, recognise components in CAD images and analyse engineering drawings on DesignQA, a benchmark built on Formula SAE rulesFrom 14 January 2027, EU law requires safety components and machinery with self-evolving machine-learning behaviour ensuring safety functions to undergo third-party conformity assessmentNASA Goddard uses AI generative design to produce mission hardware in as little as an hour or two, and says the algorithms need a human eye because they can make structures too thin123456789not assessed
2022 H22024 H2Now

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

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

Starts at 20 because CAD and finite-element analysis were already software work before this chart begins, and generative design was already proposing shapes inside set constraints. It rises with releases that could write CAD scripts and drive simulation tools, and flattens because the benchmarks show those tools rarely reaching a validated answer on their own, while safety law adds assessment duties rather than removing the person who answers for a machine.

12022 H220General-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 H123A general model that passes professional exams. First-draft quality crosses the threshold where professional work starts using it. GPT-4 (2023-03-14) ↗
32023 H226Vision 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 H128The same capability gets much cheaper and faster. Nothing new becomes possible; a lot becomes affordable at volume, which is when deployment decisions change.
52024 H230Reasoning 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 H132Agents 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 H234Long 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 H135Long-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) ↗
9Now36The 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.

Written about this#

These pieces argue from the same records this page holds, and each of their sections names what it rests on.

  • AI in skilled jobs: what it does now, and who still signs
  • AI regulation and jobs: what the EU AI Act already requires

Method and sources#

Assessment date
2026-09-30
Basis of the task judgements
2 evidence-backed · 4 platform inference · 0 not enough evidence
Verified events
7

How we assess an occupation →

← Back to Mechanical engineerThe other layer: every task, one by one →Skills, knowledge and related jobs (O*NET) →