[michaelsalim]

It's funny cause I just interviewed some people last month and I asked the same exact question. And the answer to your question is probably. The technology is so new that I expect people to have a variety of different opinions.

From the 3 people I interviewed, all of the answers are very similar which is along the lines of: Kinda, but we need to be careful of using it, privacy, hallucination, etc.

All very safe answers and doesn't say anything new to me. If they had been more specific about why and their experiences with it, I'd probably favor them more due to their experience with it. It'd also signal to me that they form their own opinion rather than simply following the crowd.

[foxglacier]

It sounds like you're an AI-happy employer though. What if their truthful answer was that they never tried to use LLMs and refuse to because they waste water or because of an overconfident view of their own skills, or they don't want to help a clanker steal their job? These are all popular beliefs that can easily come from following the right crowd rather than forming their own opinion. In fact, from what I usually hear of people's opinions, they almost never come up with them themselves, you can practically predict people's opinions on some topics just from what they look like (what social group they belong to) or what other unrelated opinions they've already told you.

[michaelsalim]

I guess that's the point though? If their opinion only comes from common popular opinions, then that signal is quite useless to me.

In this case though, I'll admit that it would be a negative signal if they never tried it even once and refuse to do so. You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all. It would be different if they at least gave it a shot and disliked it.

[overfeed]

> In this case though, I'll admit that it would be a negative signal if they never tried it even once and refuse to do so

I was arguing that this is a bad question elsewhere but you provided another reason. If a candidate tells you they haven't tried using AI (without saying why), that offers no signal at how well they'll do if you hire them, and you construe it as a negative signal. If you want to know if they would be willing to use AI as part of the job ask that question instead!

> You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all.

What do you think about using heroin?

[michaelsalim]

In this case, I wouldn't mind if they used AI or not. Honestly it'd be quite interesting to find someone who doesn't use it to hear about why. At the end of the day, I'm more concerned about how effective they'd be in their role. And if I have 2 candidate, one with better domain knowledge but no AI, and another with AI but no domain knowledge, I'd most likely pick the one with domain knowledge.

And if they can make an argument about why they're more effective without AI, more power to them. So if I were to ask the question directly as you suggest, it would be: Are you more effective than the other person I'm interviewing? - which i guess is the whole point of the interview.

> Heroin Fair point, but I also don't think that trying AI is anywhere close to the level of trying Heroin

[account42]

> You can't make a solid opinion on things you never try after all.

Of course you can, from the effect you see it have on others. Not everyone needs to do hard drugs to say they are bad for example.