Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail.

“Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail.” is a supplemental task performed by Telephone Operators. Among the occupation's 16 rated tasks, workers place it 9th by importance (#8 most important).

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.

• Sort materials or products. in Processing Information
• Examine materials or documentation for accuracy or compliance. in Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E1. Direct exposure — a language model could plausibly cut the time to do this task by at least half.

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 1.00. Automation potential label: T3.

How AI is actually used on this kind of task

The Anthropic Economic Index observes how people actually use AI on tasks like this one across millions of real conversations.

• 0.002% share of AI-use records mapped to this task
• 89% of that use is work-related
• Most common interaction: task iteration
• Average autonomy of the AI: 3.0 (1–5; higher = more autonomous)
• 99% of interactions still needed a human in the loop

Observed AI use describes people choosing to use AI as a tool on this kind of task today. It is augmentation and assistance, not a measure of jobs replaced.

Working with AI vs. handing it off

Of the AI conversations mapped to this task, the split between people working alongside AI and people delegating the task to it.

How people interact with AI on this task

Other tasks in this occupation

• Observe signal lights on switchboards, and dial or press buttons to make connections. · importance 4.6
• Operate paging systems or other systems of bells or buzzers to notify recipients of incoming calls. · importance 4.5
• Operate telephone switchboards and systems to advance and complete connections, including those for local, long distance, pay telephone, mobile, person-to-person, and emergency calls. · importance 4.5
• Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information. · importance 4.2
• Monitor automated systems for placing collect calls and intervene for a callers needing assistance. · importance 4.2
• Suggest and check alternate spellings, locations, or listing formats to customers lacking details or complete information. · importance 4.1
• Update directory information. · importance 4.1
• Offer special assistance to persons such as those who are unable to dial or who are in emergency situations. · importance 4.0
• Interrupt busy lines if an emergency warrants. · importance 3.9
• Provide assistance for customers with special billing requests. · importance 3.9
• Provide relay service for hearing-impaired users. · importance 3.8
• Keep records of calls placed and received, and of related toll charges. · importance 3.8
• Promote company products, services, and savings plans when appropriate. · importance 3.6
• Calculate and quote charges for services such as long-distance connections.

See all tasks on the Telephone Operators 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
• Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27) Anthropic
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

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

@misc{singulariki-task-13251,
  title  = {Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27); “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-13251}
}