Regulate supplies of fuel and air, or control flow of electric current and water coolant to heat furnaces and adjust temperatures.

“Regulate supplies of fuel and air, or control flow of electric current and water coolant to heat furnaces and adjust temperatures.” is a core task performed by Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders. Among the occupation's 15 rated tasks, workers place it 15th by importance (#1 most important). About 86% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Adjust equipment to ensure adequate performance. in Handling and Moving Objects

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Draw smelted metal samples from furnaces or kettles for analysis, and calculate types and amounts of materials needed to ensure that materials meet specifications. · importance 4.6
• Prepare material to load into furnaces, including cleaning, crushing, or applying chemicals, by using crushing machines, shovels, rakes, or sprayers. · importance 4.5
• Weigh materials to be charged into furnaces, using scales. · importance 4.5
• Record production data, and maintain production logs. · importance 4.5
• Observe air and temperature gauges or metal color and fluidity, and turn fuel valves or adjust controls to maintain required temperatures. · importance 4.5
• Operate controls to move or discharge metal workpieces from furnaces. · importance 4.5
• Inspect furnaces and equipment to locate defects and wear. · importance 4.4
• Drain, transfer, or remove molten metal from furnaces, and place it into molds, using hoists, pumps, or ladles. · importance 4.4
• Remove impurities from the surface of molten metal, using strainers. · importance 4.3
• Kindle fires, and shovel fuel and other materials into furnaces or onto conveyors by hand, with hoists, or by directing crane operators. · importance 4.3
• Observe operations inside furnaces, using television screens, to ensure that problems do not occur. · importance 4.3
• Sprinkle chemicals over molten metal to bring impurities to the surface. · importance 4.2
• Direct work crews in the cleaning and repair of furnace walls and flooring. · importance 4.0
• Scrape accumulations of metal oxides from floors, molds, and crucibles, and sift and store them for reclamation. · importance 3.7

See all tasks on the Metal-Refining Furnace Operators and Tenders page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-10163,
  title  = {Regulate supplies of fuel and air, or control flow of electric current and water coolant to heat furnaces and adjust temperatures.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-10163}
}