How introverted or extroverted you are may influence how you use AI

How introverted or extroverted you are may influence how you use AI

How people interact with their inner and outer worlds may shape how they approach generative AI

More than a century ago, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung made introversion and extraversion central to his theory of psychological types.

Today, we tend to use “introvert” and “extrovert” as shorthand for how sociable someone is. Jung’s preferred spelling was “extravert”, and his distinction went considerably further than whether someone enjoys a party or likes to be around others.

Jung’s original distinction raises a question in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI). If people differ in how they naturally orientate themselves towards their inner and outer worlds, should they also use AI differently?

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In Psychological Types, published in 1921, Jung described introversion and extraversion as different orientations . He distinguished them by the direction of our interest: towards the subjective, inner world or towards objects and events outside ourselves.

Contemporary personality research does not simply reproduce Jung’s types. Recent studies examining personality and AI generally measure extraversion as one of the Big Five personality traits : openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. This means that they should not be read as direct tests of Jung’s original theory.