Top 5 Jobs in Government That Are Most at Risk from AI in Oklahoma City - And How to Adapt

Oklahoma City government workers should pay attention: the Governor's AI task force and state leaders are pushing to use AI to automate repetitive public-sector work, with reports suggesting the government share of Oklahoma's workforce could fall from 21% toward 13% as AI handles tasks like call-center replies, scheduling and document management - even chatbots answering after-hours inquiries - (see the Oklahoma Governor's AI Task Force recommendations and the Oklahoman report on the state AI task force).

That shift is a prompt to upskill: practical courses like Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp registration teach everyday prompt-writing and tool use so city and county staff can move from at-risk roles into positions that manage and govern these new systems.

AI also has the potential to help us steward taxpayer dollars in a more responsible way by cutting redundant positions and replacing some positions with AI technology.

To pick the five Oklahoma City government jobs most at risk from AI, the team prioritized occupations that are both data-rich and routine-heavy - the exact conditions World Economic Forum research flags as fastest to automate - then cross-checked that list against roles the WEF and industry analysts repeatedly call out (data entry clerks, administrative secretaries, accounting/bookkeeping clerks and customer support) and local service lines common to city and county agencies.

Evidence-driven criteria included: volume of structured data (calls, emails, tickets), task predictability, and real-world cost wins (the WEF cites IBM's finding that AI can enhance responses and cut costs by about 23.5%).

Practical signals - from forecasted adoption rates to case examples where a 500-seat contact center can become a 50-person AI oversight unit - narrowed the list to front-line clerical, accounting, customer-service and routine security roles that mirror Oklahoma City workflows.

These filters were then grounded in Oklahoma-focused guidance for piloting AI in municipal agencies to ensure relevance to local public-sector operations.

“Know yourself and your enemies and you would be ever victorious.”

Administrative assistants in city and county agencies are among the most exposed to automation because so much of their day is repeatable - scheduling, routing forms, basic correspondence - and government estimates suggest roughly 62% of that work could be handled by AI, freeing time but also changing the job into one of oversight and exception-handling (Government estimate: AI could handle 62% of administrative assistant work).

Local deployments - chatbots for permit FAQs, automated triage for benefits inquiries, and AI summarizers - can speed routine service, yet the Roosevelt Institute warns these tools often shift responsibility, increase worker stress, and produce errors that staff must catch and correct, sometimes with serious consequences (Roosevelt Institute report on AI impacts for government workers).

Practical guidance from city-focused sources also stresses that smart adoption aims to free people for higher-value tasks rather than simply reduce headcount, so Oklahoma City administrative staff should expect a future where skills in auditing AI outputs, translating and validating automated responses, and managing escalations become the new essentials (CivicPlus guidance on using AI in local government); the vivid reality is this: routine inbox work may vanish, but the remaining cases will be harder, noisier, and more consequential, so preparation matters.

"Failures in AI systems, such as wrongful benefit denials, aren't just inconveniences but can be life-and-death situations for people who rely upon government programs."

Data entry clerks in the postal service and municipal clerical ranks are squarely in the crosshairs because their day-to-day - high-volume typing, cross-checking records, logging new accounts and scheduling - matches exactly what automation and smarter integrations are built to eat; job templates note that employers “don't need to hire as many data entry clerks” as systems improve, and real job postings list duties like entering employer contracts, verifying hire records, and a 100-keystroke-per-minute typing standard that machines replicate steadily (NYC data entry clerk job posting with duties and salary, Monster data entry clerk job description template and industry notes).

For Oklahoma City, the practical takeaway is clear: routine inboxes, mailroom logs and benefits tables are the low-hanging fruit for automation, leaving fewer human tasks that are messier and higher-stakes - so training to audit AI outputs, design prompt-driven templates, and handle exceptions will be the ticket forward (see local-use prompts and templates for civic teams at Top 10 AI prompts and civic use cases for Oklahoma City government teams).

The vivid reality: hours of steady typing could become a role spent catching the handful of records the AI got wrong, and that shift demands new skills.

Accounting clerks who handle accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll are squarely in the automation line of sight: research finds bookkeepers and accounts clerks could see roughly 39% of their tasks affected by generative AI, and industry coverage warns that routine “cruncher” work - data entry, processing invoices, reconciliations and payroll - is especially vulnerable (Accountants Daily analysis of bookkeepers & accounts clerks at risk from AI).

Professional bodies note that as AI takes on the mundane, staff time shifts toward higher‑value advisory and oversight, while adoption in tax and accounting firms rose from single digits to about 21% using GenAI tools in 2025 - so Oklahoma City clerks should expect systems to automate invoices, reconciles and document work and to pivot toward auditing exceptions, validating AI outputs, and translating results for managers and the public (NYSSCPA on accounting roles changing with technology, Thomson Reuters: how AI will affect accounting jobs).

The vivid reality: days once spent keying numbers could become minutes overseeing the handful of mismatches the system flags, which makes tech literacy and prompt-driven auditing the most practical protection for paychecks and public trust.

"I would not want to be getting into the data entry career in accounting, because of automation and bank fees. I know AI is such a buzzword and that is what a lot of people talk about, but that will automate away any kind of data entry."

Customer service representatives who staff city call centers, utilities lines, benefits hotlines and licensing desks are squarely exposed because their work is high-volume, scripted and predictable - the very pattern AI and chatbots are built to handle; Oklahoma guidance notes agents can have a high daily conversation load, and the City's Utilities CSR posting shows duties like processing transactions, maintaining complex account records and answering policy questions that follow repeatable checklists.

In practice, AI can triage routine billing questions, schedule appointments and auto-fill forms, which would shrink the number of full‑time seats but leave humans to manage escalations, verify sensitive records and resolve the handful of messy exceptions the system mistranscribes.

That makes parity skills - auditing AI outputs, designing prompt-driven templates for civic use, and handling escalations - critical for Oklahoma City staff who want to move from data-entry cadence to supervising automated service systems; Nucamp's civic prompts and templates offer practical examples to start that transition.

“over a hundred conversations per day,”

Entry-level security guards in Oklahoma City - those on routine patrols, lobby posts and access-control shifts - face a clear technology turn: job listings and employer pages show the role already blends traditional patrol work with “monitoring surveillance equipment” and using on-site tech, so the work is shifting toward supervising systems and handling exceptions rather than nonstop foot patrols (see Entry Security Officer responsibilities and Allied Universal security job listings for required computer skills).

That means practical upskilling - learning to interpret camera alerts, run dispatch systems, and document incidents - becomes the best defense against displacement, and civic teams can reuse tested civic prompts and triage templates to help guard teams work with automated monitoring instead of against it.

The memorable reality: a night shift that once meant hours of walking a parking lot may now be spent watching a handful of camera alerts and deciding which ones truly need boots-on-the-ground, so training in tech use, report-writing and escalation protocols offers a clear pathway to more secure, higher-value security careers.

Oklahoma City agencies and workers can adapt by marrying down-to-earth upskilling with smart governance: start with an AI inventory and risk/impact assessments, stand up a cross‑agency AI governance body with C‑level backing, and treat data governance as the first line of defense so tools aren't built on messy or sensitive records (state leaders and NCSL recommend inventories, impact assessments, oversight and procurement steps to manage risk and scale pilots; see the NCSL overview on AI in government).

Equip front-line staff to audit outputs and design prompts through practical training - short, job-focused courses that teach prompt-writing and AI oversight can move an administrative assistant or CSR from vulnerable routinized work to supervising automated systems (AI Essentials for Work bootcamp at Nucamp - practical AI skills for the workplace (15 weeks)).

Finally, pilot deliberately: small, monitored proofs-of-concept, clear procurement guardrails and continuous monitoring - advice echoed by state/local governance guides and the recent Statetech playbook - will produce safer, more useful tools for Oklahoma's public services while protecting jobs and public trust.

“No matter the application, public sector organizations face a wide range of AI risks around security, privacy, ethics, and bias in data.”