Human personality and generative AI
Who works well with generative AI?
Here is a good discussion from Eric S. Raymond.
Here is Nabeel S. Qureshi's take.
Some notes:
- Look at this from the other side: what traits correspond to not using generative AI well? As far as I can see,1 the biggest by far is simply insufficient desire to get results with generative AI. This could be caused by generically low openness to experience, fear, liking things the way they are, being in a job that seems not to immediately reward it, or something else. But I have a hard time finding examples of people who really want to be succeeding with generative AI and are not.
- Again, pure work ethic is mattering a lot. This is still a wet-blanket, uncool thing to say among programmers: the culture is still in the "work carefully but not too much" mode that dominated 2016-2024 or so.2 The obvious and important meta-lesson here is that forces shape culture, and when those forces change, the culture often changes much more slowly.
- This will all change quickly. Right now, for example, command-line fluency and a willingness to work in weird fringe ways are extremely valuable. Those should soon become much less necessary.