Will AI replace Gem and Diamond Workers?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
15/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 28% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 30% of the work
What the job involves
Fabricate, finish, or evaluate the quality of gems and diamonds used in jewelry or industrial tools.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(5)
- Advise customers and others on the best use of gems to create attractive jewelry items.
- Examine gem surfaces and internal structures, using polariscopes, refractometers, microscopes, and other optical instruments, to differentiate between stones, to identify rare specimens, or to detect flaws, defects, or peculiarities affecting gem values.
- Examine diamonds or gems to ascertain the shape, cut, and width of cut stones, or to select the cuts that will result in the biggest, best quality stones.
- Examine gems during processing to ensure accuracy of angles and positions of cuts or bores, using magnifying glasses, loupes, or shadowgraphs.
- Immerse stones in prescribed chemical solutions to determine specific gravities and key properties of gemstones or substitutes.
Out of reach(17)
- Estimate wholesale and retail value of gems, following pricing guides, market fluctuations, and other relevant economic factors.
- Assign polish, symmetry, and clarity grades to stones, according to established grading systems.
- Identify and document stones' clarity characteristics, using plot diagrams.
- Measure sizes of stones' bore holes and cuts to ensure adherence to specifications, using precision measuring instruments.
- Locate and mark drilling or cutting positions on stones or dies, using diamond chips and power hand tools.
and 12 more
Also called
Diamond Cutter · Diamond Setter · Lapidary · Diamond Polisher · Diamond Driller · Diamond Selector · Gem Cutter · Jewel Blocker
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics