Update 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 | 16 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 16 occupations that perform it.
- Keep informed of industry trends and deals.
- Learn and observe proper safety precautions, rules, regulations, and practices so that unsafe conditions can be recognized and proper safety protocols implemented.
- Stay informed of logistics technology advances and apply appropriate technology to improve logistics processes.
- Read trade publications, attend seminars, and consult with other meeting professionals to keep abreast of meeting management standards and trends.
- Keep up with developments in area of expertise by reading current journals, books, or magazine articles.
- Attend professional meetings, read literature, and participate in training or other educational offerings to keep abreast of new developments and technologies related to disaster recovery and business continuity.
- Participate in online forums or conferences to stay abreast of online retailing trends, techniques, or security threats.
- Maintain familiarity with aspects of local real estate markets.
- Specialize in green financial instruments, such as socially responsible mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETF) that are comprised of green companies.
- Consult financial literature to ensure use of the latest models or statistical techniques.
- Stay abreast of new types of loans and other financial services and products to better meet customers' needs.
- Consult tax law handbooks or bulletins to determine procedures for preparation of atypical returns.
- Maintain knowledge of current events and trends in such areas as money laundering and criminal tools and techniques.
- Conduct research to extend mathematical knowledge in traditional areas, such as algebra, geometry, probability, and logic.
- Compile and study occupational, educational, and economic information to assist counselees in determining and carrying out vocational and educational objectives.
- Research health and safety code requirements to inform design.
- Attend meetings or seminars to obtain information for use in training programs or to inform management of training program status.
- Research or evaluate new technologies for use in fraud detection systems.
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
16 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes
- Appraisers and Assessors of Real Estate
- Business Continuity Planners
- Educational, Guidance, and Career Counselors and Advisors
- Environmental Compliance Inspectors
- Financial and Investment Analysts
- Financial Risk Specialists
- Fraud Examiners, Investigators and Analysts
- Interior Designers
- Loan Officers
- Logisticians
- Mathematicians
- Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners
- Online Merchants
- Tax Preparers
- Training and Development Specialists
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.