Maintain knowledge of current developments in area of expertise
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 | 19 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 19 occupations that perform it.
- Develop expertise in subject matters related to committee assignments.
- Read trade journals and professional literature to stay informed on trends, innovations, and changes that affect media planning.
- Attend meetings, professional seminars, or conferences to keep abreast of changes in executive legislative directives or new technologies impacting security operations.
- Stay abreast of advances in technology.
- Maintain current knowledge of organizational policies and procedures, federal and state policies and directives, and current accounting standards.
- Attend investment briefings or consult financial media to stay abreast of relevant investment markets.
- Maintain current knowledge of the quality control field, relying on current literature pertaining to materials use, technological advances, or statistical studies.
- Review statistical studies, technological advances, or regulatory standards and trends to stay abreast of issues in the field of quality control.
- Study legislation, arbitration decisions, and collective bargaining contracts to assess industry trends.
- Meet with federal, state, and local agencies to stay abreast of policies and to discuss improvements for education programs.
- Maintain familiarity with all games used at a facility, as well as strategies or tricks employed in those games.
- Maintain awareness of advances in medicine, computerized diagnostic and treatment equipment, data processing technology, government regulations, health insurance changes, and financing options.
- Review scientific literature, participate in continuing education activities, or attend conferences and seminars to maintain current knowledge of clinical studies affairs and issues.
- Keep informed of activities or changes that could affect the likelihood of an emergency, response efforts, or plan implementation.
- Maintain current knowledge of relevant regulations, including proposed and final rules.
- Keep informed regarding pending industry changes, trends, or best practices.
- Keep informed of new products and developments.
- Keep abreast of the issues affecting constituents by making personal visits and phone calls, reading local newspapers, and viewing or listening to local broadcasts.
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
19 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Advertising and Promotions Managers
- Clinical Research Coordinators
- Compensation and Benefits Managers
- Compliance Managers
- Compliance Officers
- Computer and Information Systems Managers
- Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary
- Emergency Management Directors
- Gambling Managers
- Human Resources Managers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Investment Fund Managers
- Legislators
- Medical and Health Services Managers
- Quality Control Systems Managers
- Regulatory Affairs Managers
- Security and Fire Alarm Systems Installers
- Security Managers
- Treasurers and Controllers
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.