Develop software or applications for scientific or technical use
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Producing the draft is the single thing current models are best at, and it needs no integration at all: a prompt and a couple of reference documents are enough. A person still edits it and takes responsibility for what goes out.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Drafting and content production |
| Jobs that do it | 9 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Generalist agents, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Thinking Creatively (4.A.2.b.2) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 9 occupations that perform it.
- Develop software to control electrical systems.
- Provide statistical and computational tools for biologically based activities, such as genetic analysis, measurement of gene expression, or gene function determination.
- Confer with information technology specialists to develop computer applications for genetic data analysis.
- Develop instrumentation and software for astronomical observation and analysis.
- Develop applied software for the analysis and interpretation of geological data.
- Develop automated routines to correct for the presence of image distorting artifacts, such as ground vegetation.
- Develop, operate, and maintain geographical information computer systems, including hardware, software, plotters, digitizers, printers, and video cameras.
- Design and create special programs for tasks such as statistical analysis and data entry and cleaning.
- Consult with remote sensing scientists, surveyors, cartographers, or engineers to determine project needs.
- Develop new software applications or customize existing applications to meet specific scientific project needs.
- Provide geographical information systems support to the private and public sectors.
- Develop specialized computer software routines to customize and integrate image analysis.
- Create or modify web-based bioinformatics tools.
- Design and apply bioinformatics algorithms including unsupervised and supervised machine learning, dynamic programming, or graphic algorithms.
- Create novel computational approaches and analytical tools as required by research goals.
- Consult with researchers to analyze problems, recommend technology-based solutions, or determine computational strategies.
- Collaborate with software developers in the development and modification of commercial bioinformatics software.
- Test new and updated bioinformatics tools and software.
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 drafting and content production, and what it costs.
Drafting needs no tools, no integration and no platform. One $20 assistant and two reference documents beat any agent builder here, and every extra thing in this stack is cost with nothing behind it.
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
9 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Design computer or information systems or applications”. 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.