Will AI replace Biologists?

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

Task exposure to today's AI

45/100

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 Biologists?

Not entirely. Today's AI tools can take on about 45% of the typical work in this occupation, mostly: program and use computers to store, process, and analyze data. The parts that stay human include: Collect and analyze biological data about relationships among and between organisms and their environment.; Develop and maintain liaisons and effective working relations with groups and individuals, agencies, and the public to encourage cooperative management strategies or to develop information and interpret findings.; Supervise biological technicians and technologists and other scientists..

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

Program and use computers to store, process, and analyze data. 78%

Prepare technical and research reports, such as environmental impact reports, and communicate the results to individuals in industry, government, or the general public. 75%

Collect and analyze biological data about relationships among and between organisms and their environment. 28%

Identify, classify, and study structure, behavior, ecology, physiology, nutrition, culture, and distribution of plant and animal species. 28%

Develop and maintain liaisons and effective working relations with groups and individuals, agencies, and the public to encourage cooperative management strategies or to develop information and interpret findings. 17%

Supervise biological technicians and technologists and other scientists. 12%

+ 15 more tasks (39% of the week) in the full test.

Your human edge

Collect and analyze biological data about relationships among and between organisms and their environment.
Develop and maintain liaisons and effective working relations with groups and individuals, agencies, and the public to encourage cooperative management strategies or to develop information and interpret findings.
Supervise biological technicians and technologists and other scientists.

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 screen 50 papers for one study question, verify every claim against the source PDFs, and draft a 1,500-word literature review with formatted references in under 8 hours.

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 a past species-abundance analysis as an AI-assisted R or Python script with plots and stats, version it in Git with your prompts, and compare results and time to the original.

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 field images or audio recordings, score accuracy against your own labels, and write a 2-page validation and AI-disclosure note.

Take the free 11-question test