Job Check
Telephone Operators
Provide information by accessing alphabetical, geographical, or other directories. Assist customers with special billing requests, such as charges to a third party and credits or refunds for incorrectly dialed numbers or bad connections. May handle emergency calls and assist children or people with physical disabilities to make telephone calls.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Observe signal lights on switchboards, and dial or press buttons to make connections.AI could speed this up a lot
- 02Operate telephone switchboards and systems to advance and complete connections, including those for local, long distance, pay telephone, mobile, person-to-person, and emergency calls.AI could speed this up a lot
- 03Listen to customer requests, referring to alphabetical or geographical directories to answer questions and provide telephone information.AI could speed this up a lot
- 04Update directory information.AI could speed this up a lot
- 05Suggest and check alternate spellings, locations, or listing formats to customers lacking details or complete information.AI could speed this up a lot
- 06Perform clerical duties such as typing, proofreading, and sorting mail.People already use AI for this at work
- 07Offer special assistance to persons such as those who are unable to dial or who are in emergency situations.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 08Operate paging systems or other systems of bells or buzzers to notify recipients of incoming calls.AI could speed this up a lot
- 09Monitor automated systems for placing collect calls and intervene for a callers needing assistance.AI could speed this up a lot
- 10Interrupt busy lines if an emergency warrants.Mostly human for now
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
90%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 96% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 45% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Interrupt busy lines if an emergency warrants.