Will AI replace Biological Technicians?

Some of your tasks will be automated. People who use AI will have the edge.

Task exposure to today's AI

32/100

Moderate exposure

This is the occupation's typical task mix. Your own score can be up to 30 points higher or lower depending on how you work: routine share, people contact, judgment and how much you already use AI.

Get your personal score

Will AI replace Biological Technicians?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 32% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: use computers, computer-interfaced equipment, robotics or high-technology industrial applications to perform work duties. The parts that stay human include: Conduct research, or assist in the conduct of research, including the collection of information and samples, such as blood, water, soil, plants and animals.; Isolate, identify and prepare specimens for examination.; Monitor and observe experiments, recording production and test data for evaluation by research personnel..

People who learn to use AI for the automatable parts keep the edge. The 3-phase plan below shows where to start.

Which tasks AI can take on

The largest tasks in this occupation, their share of the working week, and how much of each today's AI tools can do.

TaskAutomatable

Use computers, computer-interfaced equipment, robotics or high-technology industrial applications to perform work duties. 55%

Provide technical support and services for scientists and engineers working in fields such as agriculture, environmental science, resource management, biology, and health sciences. 47%

Monitor and observe experiments, recording production and test data for evaluation by research personnel. 23%

Conduct research, or assist in the conduct of research, including the collection of information and samples, such as blood, water, soil, plants and animals. 20%

Set up, adjust, calibrate, clean, maintain, and troubleshoot laboratory and field equipment. 15%

Isolate, identify and prepare specimens for examination. 10%

+ 11 more tasks (43% of the week) in the full test.

Your human edge

Conduct research, or assist in the conduct of research, including the collection of information and samples, such as blood, water, soil, plants and animals.
Isolate, identify and prepare specimens for examination.
Monitor and observe experiments, recording production and test data for evaluation by research personnel.

AI tools to try

ChatGPT / Claude for literature and writingAI research tools (e.g. Elicit, Consensus, Semantic Scholar)Copilot for data analysis code (Python, R)

Related roles

A 3-phase AI learning plan

Phase 1

Faster literature and writing

Literature search and summaries with AI, always checked against the papers.
Drafts of methods, reports and grant text.
Reference management and formatting.

Project

Use AI to summarise 20 papers on one assay you run, verify every claim against the PDFs, and draft a 2-page methods section with formatted references – log hours saved.

Phase 2

AI for data analysis

Analysis code in Python or R written with AI help.
Visualisation and statistics explained step by step.
Reproducibility: version code and prompts.

Project

Rebuild one month of plate-reader or qPCR data analysis as an AI-written Python or R script with plots and stats, version it in Git with your prompts, and compare results to your old spreadsheet.

Phase 3

AI as a research method

Classification, extraction or modelling with AI on your data.
Validate against human labels or ground truth.
Ethics, data protection and disclosure of AI use.

Project

Train or prompt an AI model to classify 500 of your own microscopy images or species samples, score accuracy against your manual labels, and write a one-page ethics and AI-use disclosure.

Take the free 11-question test