Maintain laboratory equipment, such as microscopes, mass spectrometers, microtomes, immunostainers, tissue processors, embedding centers, and water baths.

“Maintain laboratory equipment, such as microscopes, mass spectrometers, microtomes, immunostainers, tissue processors, embedding centers, and water baths.” is a task performed by Histology Technicians. Among the occupation's 8 rated tasks, workers place it 1st by importance (#8 most important). About 100% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Maintain medical equipment or instruments. in Repairing and Maintaining Mechanical Equipment

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Cut sections of body tissues for microscopic examination, using microtomes. · importance 5.0
• Embed tissue specimens into paraffin wax blocks, or infiltrate tissue specimens with wax. · importance 5.0
• Mount tissue specimens on glass slides. · importance 5.0
• Stain tissue specimens with dyes or other chemicals to make cell details visible under microscopes. · importance 4.9
• Freeze tissue specimens. · importance 4.2
• Operate computerized laboratory equipment to dehydrate, decalcify, or microincinerate tissue samples. · importance 4.1
• Archive diagnostic material, such as histologic slides and blocks. · importance 4.1

See all tasks on the Histology Technicians page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-22798,
  title  = {Maintain laboratory equipment, such as microscopes, mass spectrometers, microtomes, immunostainers, tissue processors, embedding centers, and water baths.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-22798}
}