Maintain current knowledge related to work activities
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 | 12 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 12 occupations that perform it.
- Learn to operate new office technologies as they are developed and implemented.
- Maintain awareness of new and emerging computational methods and technologies.
- Specialize in particular materials or types of object, such as documents and books, paintings, decorative arts, textiles, metals, or architectural materials.
- Maintain up-to-date knowledge of music releases and trends.
- Attend continuing education courses to maintain or update skills.
- Read current literature, talk with colleagues, continue education, or participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in the field.
- Keep informed of provisions of labor-management agreements and their effects on departmental operations.
- Keep informed about changes in tax and deduction laws that apply to the payroll process.
- Maintain knowledge of all organizational and governmental rules affecting purchases, and provide information about these rules to organization staff members and to vendors.
- Maintain current knowledge of relevant legislation, political situations, or other factors that could affect freight shipping.
- Learn material and pass required tests for certification.
- Maintain knowledge of community services and resources available to patients.
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
12 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Administrative Services Managers
- Bioinformatics Technicians
- Dental Hygienists
- Disc Jockeys, Except Radio
- First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers
- Freight Forwarders
- Museum Technicians and Conservators
- Patient Representatives
- Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
- Procurement Clerks
- Public Safety Telecommunicators
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
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.