Attend training sessions or professional meetings to develop or maintain professional knowledge
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can find, read and summarise the sources this work depends on, and it can cover far more of them than a person would ever open. What it does not do is decide which sources deserve trust, or what the findings mean for your situation.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Research and retrieval work |
| Jobs that do it | 56 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Web, data and docs, Generalist agents |
| O*NET activity | Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge (4.A.2.b.3) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 56 occupations that perform it.
- Attend or participate in conferences, community events, and promotional events related to products or technologies.
- Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional organizations and conferences.
- Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.
- Keep abreast of developments and technological advances in the mathematical field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.
- Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, giving presentations at conferences, and serving on committees in professional associations.
- Keep abreast of developments and technological advances in the communication field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.
- Participate in cultural and literary activities, such as traveling abroad and attending performing arts events.
- Keep abreast of developments in their field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional organizations and activities.
- Participate in conferences, seminars, and training sessions to keep abreast of developments in the field, and integrate relevant information into training programs.
- Attend professional meetings, educational conferences, and teacher training workshops to maintain and improve professional competence.
- Attend professional meetings, educational conferences, or teacher training workshops to maintain or improve professional competence.
- Attend in-service training, workshops, or meetings to keep abreast of current practices or trends in adapted physical education.
- Attend professional meetings, conferences, and workshops to maintain and improve professional competence.
- Attend professional meetings, educational conferences, or teacher training workshops to improve professional competence.
- Participate in training and development sessions to improve tutoring practices or learn new tutoring techniques.
- Engage in professional development activities, such as taking continuing education classes and attending or participating in conferences, workshops, professional meetings, and associations.
- Attend lectures given by the supervising instructor.
- Attend continuing education courses to maintain or update skills.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for research and retrieval work, and what it costs.
Research is the one shape of work that needs no integration at all, so a single $20 assistant with browsing is the whole stack. Add a crawler only once you are pulling hundreds of pages on a schedule rather than reading a few.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Generalist agents
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
56 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Adapted Physical Education Specialists
- Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructors
- Advertising and Promotions Managers
- Agricultural Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Anthropology and Archeology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Architecture Teachers, Postsecondary
- Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary
- Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Biological Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Business Teachers, Postsecondary
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Middle School
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School
- Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
- Communications Teachers, Postsecondary
- Computer Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Teachers, Postsecondary
- Dental Hygienists
- Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Education Teachers, Postsecondary
- Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education
- Engineering Teachers, Postsecondary
- English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Environmental Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Family and Consumer Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary
- Foreign Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
- Forestry and Conservation Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Geography Teachers, Postsecondary
- Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary
- History Teachers, Postsecondary
- Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education
- Law Teachers, Postsecondary
- Librarians and Media Collections Specialists
- Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Mathematical Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education
- Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary
- Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary
- Physics Teachers, Postsecondary
- Political Science Teachers, Postsecondary
- Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education
- Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Recreation and Fitness Studies Teachers, Postsecondary
- Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education
- Self-Enrichment Teachers
- Social Work Teachers, Postsecondary
- Sociology Teachers, Postsecondary
- Special Education Teachers, Elementary School
- Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten
- Special Education Teachers, Middle School
- Special Education Teachers, Preschool
- Special Education Teachers, Secondary School
- Substitute Teachers, Short-Term
- Teaching Assistants, Postsecondary
- Tutors
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Maintain current knowledge in area of expertise”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.