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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›Respiratory therapist›How we know

Respiratory therapist — 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
2026-10-01
With evidence
0/4
Verified events
5

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
Managing ventilators and weaningHome ventilation and chronic care
Physical automation
Airway care and breathing treatments
Cognitive automation
Assessing and monitoring patients

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. 10 → 27.
1007550250
Respiratory therapist employment will grow 9% from 2025 to 2035 as an ageing population brings more respiratory conditions, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimatedEarly automated closed-loop ventilation did not increase ventilator-free days compared with protocolised conventional ventilation in 1,201 critically ill adults, the ACTiVE trial foundHome ventilation telemonitoring, with an algorithm raising alerts and specialised nurses acting on them, lowered blood carbon dioxide against usual follow-up, France's eVENT trial foundAutomated closed-loop weaning probably shortens mechanical ventilation by 24% and reduces reintubation compared with non-automated weaning, a Cochrane review of 62 trials foundAutomated ventilation after cardiac surgery needed fewer manual interventions per hour than conventional ventilation, with as many critical alarms, a POSITiVE trial analysis found123456789not assessed
2022 H22024 H2Now

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

● 5 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 10 because ventilators with alarms, blood-gas analysers and electronic charting were standard before this chart begins, while every setting change and weaning step was made by hand. It climbs as closed-loop ventilation modes that adjust themselves and run weaning steps spread through trials and intensive care units, and as home ventilation moves to remote monitoring. It stays low because clinicians still choose modes and targets, answer the alarms, do the hands-on airway work and decide when to step in.

12022 H210General-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 H111A general model that passes professional exams. First-draft quality crosses the threshold where professional work starts using it. GPT-4 (2023-03-14) ↗
32023 H213Vision 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 H115The same capability gets much cheaper and faster. Nothing new becomes possible; a lot becomes affordable at volume, which is when deployment decisions change.
52024 H217Reasoning 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 H119Agents 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 H222Long 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 H125Long-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) ↗
9Now27The 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

Method and sources#

Assessment date
2026-10-01
Basis of the task judgements
0 evidence-backed · 4 platform inference · 0 not enough evidence
Verified events
5

How we assess an occupation →

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