Your Most Creative Workers Don’t Trust AI. Here’s How to Help Them

People who score high in Openness in the Big Five personality system tend to be the most adaptable and open-minded among us. Openness reflects how curious, imaginative and receptive someone is to new ideas, and people high in this trait get excited by new tools, new perspectives and new ways of thinking. Unlike people who score lower in Openness, who tend to prefer the familiar and the proven, high Openness individuals are usually the first to explore something new.

With that curious, creative nature, you'd expect high Openness people to be the most willing to embrace artificial intelligence at work. But Truity's recent AI study found the opposite. The research, which surveyed over 56,000 individuals on their AI use and attitudes, found that high Openness individuals are actually the most skeptical of all.

Now, you can't force people to trust AI or enthusiastically embrace it as the future of their work. But you can understand where your high Openness employees are coming from, and that understanding can help you move the conversation forward and support these employees in exploring AI on their own terms.

Why are High Openness People Skeptical About AI?

As to why Open employees are hesitant, or outright refuse, to adopt AI at work, it comes down to what our researchers call the “Openness Paradox.” Put simply, the same critical curiosity that makes these employees so experimental and creative in every other part of their work is exactly what makes them suspicious of AI. They're not resistant to new tools on principle, quite the opposite, they're usually the first to try something new. But that same instinct to question, probe and test an idea means AI gets put under more scrutiny. Your Openness employees are weighing what AI means for their job stability, their authenticity, their creativity, their sense of what makes work theirs. Many high Openness people, myself included, who work in creative fields are concerned about how much AI might erode the imagination and ingenuity that makes us human, and what that means for the future of the arts. 

So instead of happily accepting a new tool that promises faster production, your high Openness employees are asking the harder question: what am I giving up for the sake of convenience and speed?

That intellectual curiosity can feel like a problem when your team is hesitant to adopt the AI tools you've invested time and money in. But the same curiosity can also be your greatest asset, if you know how to work with it. 

Three Ways to Help Open Employees Get Comfortable With AI

1. Encourage them to experiment without pushing 

High Openness people don't like to feel pressured into using a tool they haven't critically examined yet. To be fair, most employees, regardless of their Big Five traits, resist a pushy management style. Two theories in psychology back this up. Psychological reactance theory holds that a perceived threat to your freedom makes you want to do the opposite, just to reclaim it. Self-determination theory holds that people are most motivated when they have autonomy, feel competent, and feel respected and understood by others. Both point to the same conclusion: people engage most when they feel in control of their choices.

So rather than mandating AI use, make it a process of discovery. Give your high Openness employees, and anyone else who's skeptical, the chance to test their own work against AI output. This lets them draw their own conclusions about where AI helps and where they want to draw the line.

I scored 100% Openness on Truity’s Big Five Personality Test, and I can speak to this firsthand. I avoided AI for a long time. Then, worried my work might be outsourced if I didn't learn the tools, I started experimenting. I looked at where AI could save me time without compromising the quality or human creativity behind my work. Drawing my own conclusions, on my own terms, is what let me adopt AI for some tasks without compromising my values.

2. Listen to their feedback about what works and what doesn’t 

That same critical thinking can help you manage your team better. Rather than adopting AI for every task, listen to what your high Openness employees report back.

These team members are unusually sensitive to work that feels generic, derivative or flat. Because they value originality, they'll notice when AI-generated work has missed something subtle or defaulted to cliché. So keep the floor open. Ask questions after they've experimented. Their feedback can help your whole team figure out where AI genuinely helps, rather than rolling it out everywhere by default.

3. Use their skepticism to your advantage in pressure tests

It's tempting to roll AI out across every task once leadership decides it's the right direction, but tools that haven't been pressure-tested against your actual workflows can underperform in ways that aren't obvious until real money or real campaigns are on the line. For example, you might assume AI will save time and outperform your team's own marketing copy, only to find that assumption costs you conversions and quality.

Highly Open employees often have a heightened attentiveness to nuance and a habit of questioning the status quo. That's exactly the lens that catches a tool underperforming in ways a more accepting team might miss. They often make excellent first-line beta testers before a wider rollout as a result.

This approach tends to land well with high Openness employees, because the investigation itself is the reward. Picking a new tool apart to find its limits is the kind of problem they enjoy sinking their teeth into. Give them that room to experiment, and be skeptical, and what comes back is real insight from someone who's actually engaged with the problem. Their critical eyes can help your organization avoid investing time and money in tools that aren’t a good fit. 

What You Gain From Their Resistance 

It's tempting to see your AI skeptics as a problem to solve, something standing between you and a smooth company-wide rollout. But look at what's actually happening when a high Openness employee pushes back on a new tool. They're not refusing out of stubbornness. They're refusing to take it on faith, and that's a much more useful position to work with.

Give that employee the chance to test the tool properly, on their own terms, and actually listen when they report back. If the tool holds up under that scrutiny, you may notice them move swiftly from skeptic to believer, and that matters more than it might seem. Their colleagues have spent years watching their curious, creative colleagues call out anything that compromises the  originality and innovation of the work. When that same person says a piece of AI software is actually worth using, people pay attention.

That's the real payoff here. You're getting the most credible voice on your team making the case for you.