Will AI replace Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
7/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 12% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 13% of the work
What the job involves
Cut, grind, and polish eyeglasses, contact lenses, or other precision optical elements. Assemble and mount lenses into frames or process other optical elements. Includes precision lens polishers or grinders, centerer-edgers, and lens mounters.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(2)
- Examine prescriptions, work orders, or broken or used eyeglasses to determine specifications for lenses, contact lenses, or other optical elements.
- Select lens blanks, molds, tools, and polishing or grinding wheels, according to production specifications.
Out of reach(16)
- Mount and secure lens blanks or optical lenses in holding tools or chucks of cutting, polishing, grinding, or coating machines.
- Inspect lens blanks to detect flaws, verify smoothness of surface, and ensure thickness of coating on lenses.
- Clean finished lenses and eyeglasses, using cloths and solvents.
- Shape lenses appropriately so that they can be inserted into frames.
- Mount, secure, and align finished lenses in frames or optical assemblies, using precision hand tools.
and 11 more
Also called
Optical Technician · Contact Lens Blocker · Contact Lens Cutter · Edger · Precision Lens Grinder · Lens Grinder and Polisher · Polisher · Artificial Glass Eye Maker
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