There’s a good chance that you’ve told a friend you love reading because you’re an introvert, or apologised for being late because you’re a Type B.
But scientists from the UK and Germany have unveiled four new personality types for people to fall into – how they use AI chatbots.
The study, published in The International Journal on Networked Business, identified four types of ChatGPT users from a survey of 344 people.
Every person, from those who lazily ask ChatGPT to write an email to the experts using it to chat to dolphins, falls into at least one of them.
What are the four personality types of ChatGPT users?
One type is the tech-savvy AI enthusiast, who made up 25.6% of the participants.
These people quickly embraced ChatGPT, even though it had only been around for four months or so when the survey took place in 2020.
Study author Christoph Gerling tells Metro: ‘This might be a marketing executive who treats ChatGPT as a senior peer – engaging in deep, multi-turn dialogues to refine global campaign strategies and valuing the “AI’s judgment”.’
AI enthusiasts may also be a bit of a show-off by using AI to maintain their reputation in the office as an ‘innovation leader’, the research associate at Berlin’s Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society adds.
‘Naïve pragmatists’, meanwhile, are the ultimate solution hunters, who made up 20.6% of those surveyed.
The paper said this group prioritise getting things done, both on and offline, with little interest in how that’s achieved.
‘This might be a young professional who uses ChatGPT as a Swiss Army knife for mundane tasks such as recipe suggestions or gift ideas, rarely questioning information sources or limitations,’ Gerling says.
A third category, Cautious Adopters, is the largest group at 35.5% of participants.
Researchers described them as people who try to balance the pros and the cons in life, including when it comes to new-fangled tech like AI.
‘This might be a small business owner who experiments with ChatGPT for drafting customer communications, but only adopts it after observing peers’ success,’ Gerling says.
Reserved explorers, finally, are just dipping their toes in AI. They’re the fewest in number, at just 18.3%, but are the most apprehensive.
These worrywarts do want to understand the hype around virtual assistants, but are, well, worried about their data and privacy.
Gerling says: ‘This might be a tech-sceptical older adult who tries ChatGPT to see whether it can explain a complex news topic, finds the result acceptable, but does not perceive it as a significant improvement over a traditional search engine.’
Which personality type are you?
The findings are less about the actual personalities of the ChatGPT users and more about what drew them to make an account to begin with.
As Gerling explains, if you do use AI chatbots, you probably fall somewhere between these four personality types.
This includes his co-author, Oxford AI lecturer Dr Fabian Braesemann, who says he’s between an AI Enthusiast and a Naïve Pragmatist.
Dr Braesemann says: ‘I focus on optimising prompts based on the structure of human thinking, having completely weaned myself off social pleasantries that I would normally use when addressing people.
‘Furthermore, I lack the loyalty typical of an Enthusiast; in true Pragmatist fashion, I switch the moment a cheaper or more powerful tool appears.
‘Essentially, your personality – specifically your need for control versus your curiosity – determines whether you embrace the tool or keep it at arm’s length.’
How has AI changed over the last few years?
A lot has changed in the six years since the survey when it comes to AI, with it now able to book flights on your behalf or generate lifelike images.
As much as general-purpose chatbots are still just sophisticated next-word calculators, many users have an ’emotional’ relationship to them.
Metro has heard from children who consider AI as a friend, teens who treat them like therapists and adults who rely on them like doctors.
There are even AI companionship apps, which are personalised chatbots that simulate partners, celebrities or fictional characters.
Still, Brasemann says, most people see AI tools as just that, tools. Nothing more, nothing less.
‘Findings show that while simple chat interfaces draw people in, the real value comes from the personal satisfaction of mastering “prompts” to achieve the best results,’ he adds.
‘An individual’s personal motivation now determines the tool’s usefulness more than ever.’
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