Manipulate controls to set, activate, and adjust mechanisms on machinery.

“Manipulate controls to set, activate, and adjust mechanisms on machinery.” is a core task performed by Agricultural Equipment Operators. Among the occupation's 17 rated tasks, workers place it 13th by importance (#5 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.

• Operate agricultural or forestry equipment. in Controlling Machines and Processes

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

• Load and unload crops or containers of materials, manually or using conveyors, handtrucks, forklifts, or transfer augers. · importance 4.5
• Mix specified materials or chemicals, and dump solutions, powders, or seeds into planter or sprayer machinery. · importance 4.4
• Spray fertilizer or pesticide solutions to control insects, fungus and weed growth, and diseases, using hand sprayers. · importance 4.3
• Observe and listen to machinery operation to detect equipment malfunctions. · importance 4.3
• Load hoppers, containers, or conveyors to feed machines with products, using forklifts, transfer augers, suction gates, shovels, or pitchforks. · importance 4.2
• Direct and monitor the activities of work crews engaged in planting, weeding, or harvesting activities. · importance 4.2
• Operate or tend equipment used in agricultural production, such as tractors, combines, and irrigation equipment. · importance 4.2
• Operate towed machines such as seed drills or manure spreaders to plant, fertilize, dust, and spray crops. · importance 4.2
• Adjust, repair, and service farm machinery and notify supervisors when machinery malfunctions. · importance 4.0
• Weigh crop-filled containers, and record weights and other identifying information. · importance 4.0
• Drive trucks to haul crops, supplies, tools, or farm workers. · importance 4.0
• Walk beside or ride on planting machines while inserting plants in planter mechanisms at specified intervals. · importance 4.0
• Guide products on conveyors to regulate flow through machines, and to discard diseased or rotten products. · importance 4.0
• Irrigate soil, using portable pipes or ditch systems, and maintain ditches or pipes and pumps. · importance 4.0

See all tasks on the Agricultural Equipment 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
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

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

@misc{singulariki-task-13360,
  title  = {Manipulate controls to set, activate, and adjust mechanisms on machinery.},
  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-13360}
}