Anyone who frequents fast-food restaurants will sooner or later run across a kiosk designed to replace a cashier. And on factory floors across the nation, robots are increasingly doing tasks once handled by humans.

Artificial intelligence, which uses computers to handle mental tasks, could prove just as disruptive for white-collar workers in the years ahead, according to a new study from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings.

High-tech hubs like Boulder, and to a lesser degree metro Denver, are vulnerable economically to the changes coming from the widespread adoption of AI expected in the years ahead.

“Well-paid, well-educated professionals are not immune from the disruptions of emerging technologies,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings.

Rather than relying on predictions from labor economists and futurists, Brookings used a novel technique developed by Stanford University researcher Michael Webb. It deployed machine learning to scour the language in technology patents and match up the terms found with occupational descriptions.

While not all the patents will see the light of day, many represent concepts that are ready to hit the market and change how work is done.

The study found that virtually every occupational group, 740 out of 769, involved tasks targeted in AI patents. Surprisingly, agriculture had the greatest exposure, followed by science, business, finance, technology, manufacturing and natural resources

Among workers, white and Asian-American men are the most vulnerable to job disruption in the years ahead. Workers with a bachelor’s degree face five times the chance of AI disruption than those with just a high school degree.

Muro emphasized exposure or disruption doesn’t necessarily mean substitution. As with robotics and automation, AI may complement a job and eliminate routine and menial tasks. But it is still early days, and over time, fewer people may be needed to complete jobs they now take great pride in handling with their brains, not their backs.

“It will likely be disruptive and require change and adjustment,” he warned.

For example, supercomputers have gotten better at studying scan and lab results to more accurately identify certain types of cancers. And that diagnostic expertise is only expected to advance in the years ahead.

It is John Henry, a steel-driver in a mine who couldn’t compete with a steam drill, for a new era. But this time around, it will be pathologists, who despite investing large sums of money to fund years of study, who might not be able to keep up.

There are two categories of communities that face a higher chance of disruption — large high-tech metro areas, as well as manufacturing-focused communities.

Boulder has a high concentration of workers in scientific occupations, as well as in architecture and engineering and in computers and math. Outside of agriculture, those are the three most exposed groups, Muro said. That leaves Boulder as one of the most exposed economies in the country.

Denver doesn’t have as high a concentration of scientific jobs, but it does have a lot of business and financial operations that artificial intelligence systems could take on.

“The point here is that you’re high-value, white-collar urban economies with their important bases in professional services,” he said.

Among the most vulnerable U.S. cities to AI disruption are Salt Lake City, San Jose, Calif., Seattle, as well as manufacturing hubs like Detroit and Indianapolis.

Despite learning technological skills, manufacturing workers are at risk because computers could eventually handle running automated systems and production line robots.

Among the occupations that will be the most sheltered from AI disruptions are those that involve hands-on care for others. Computers may displace pathologists, but not the night shift nurse.