How AI Is Expanding the Scope of Work

According to a new report from OpenAI Economic Research's Work at the Frontier series, AI is not just boosting work efficiency but is breaking down the boundaries between job roles. An analysis of over 800,000 messages from US ChatGPT users found that 16.8% of work-related messages and 43.5% of occupation-specific messages were used to perform tasks belonging to occupations other than the user's own.

This phenomenon is defined as Task Crossover. It refers to a pattern in which tasks historically attributed to a specific occupation also appear in other occupational groups. For example, small business owners directly reviewing contracts, or salespeople exploring customer datasets without a data analyst.

Looking at this by occupational group, the Task Crossover phenomenon is very clearly evident.

• Customer Experience (CX) representatives: 77% of occupation-specific messages were tasks from other occupations
• Designers: 75%
• HR professionals: 69%
• Legal professionals: 56%
• Marketers: 53%

In particular, tasks related to marketing and engineering tended to travel farthest into other occupational groups. Financial calculations and technical troubleshooting were external tasks that appeared commonly across nearly all occupational groups.

This report provides early data on how AI is reshaping actual task content before job descriptions or titles change. It serves as the basis for the AI Jobs Transition Framework, which addresses how AI will restructure jobs going forward.