What Employees Who Love AI Have in Common (And How to Create More of Them)
Some of your people can't stop using AI. Others won't touch it. The difference isn't tech savviness, age, or job function. It's something else entirely.
I'm going to give you The AI Enthusiast Profile, a breakdown of the three values that consistently appear in employees who embrace AI without being pushed. Once you know what these values are, you can start designing AI initiatives that activate them across your workforce. Or, at minimum, you'll stop accidentally suppressing them.
The Enthusiasm Gap
Look around any organization mid-AI-rollout, and you'll see a strange distribution. A small group is obsessed with finding new use cases every week, sharing prompts in Slack, and is genuinely excited. A larger group is indifferent; they'll use it if forced and forget about it otherwise. And another group is actively resistant.
The standard explanation is generational. Young people get it. Older people don't.
Except that's not what the data shows. A Pew Research study found usage patterns that cut across age groups in unexpected ways. Some older workers are enthusiastic adopters. Some younger workers want nothing to do with it.
Generational thinking fails here because it always fails. People aren't their birth year. They're their values.
What Enthusiasts Actually Value
The Valuegraphics Database tracks what matters to people through behavioral data, not surveys that ask people what they think they care about. When we profile AI enthusiasts, the people who adopt voluntarily and keep using it, we see the same three values appearing over and over.
Personal Growth (ranked 6th globally) is the big one. These are people who want to be a better version of themselves. They see AI as a lever for that. A way to learn faster, produce more, and handle complexity that used to be out of reach. The tool feeds their appetite for growth.
Creativity (ranked 18th) shows up constantly, and not just in stereotypically creative roles. Remember, Creativity means whatever the person thinks it means. For some, it's art. For others, it's finding elegant solutions to problems. AI enthusiasts tend to see the tools as creative amplifiers, not creative replacements.
Experiences (ranked 14th) round out the profile. These folks want to do stuff. Try things. They're drawn to novelty, and AI represents a whole new category of experiences to explore.
Now look at what's notably absent from this profile: Employment Security, Security, and Basic Needs. The values associated with stability and predictability. AI enthusiasts aren't particularly worried about those things, or they've already resolved those concerns somehow.
This tells us something important. You can't create enthusiasm in people who are fundamentally anxious about their stability. You have to address the anxiety first.
Three Ways to Activate These Values
If Personal Growth, Creativity, and Experiences drive AI enthusiasm, the question becomes, how do you bring those values into your AI rollout?
For Personal Growth: Frame AI as a skill, not a tool.
People who value growth want to get better at things. Don't position AI as "a thing that does work for you." Position it as "a capability you can develop." Track skill progression. Celebrate mastery. Create levels of proficiency that people can work toward.
The difference sounds subtle, but it's not. One framing threatens identity (the tool does my job). The other enhances identity (I'm becoming someone who can do more).
For Creativity: Emphasize possibility, not efficiency.
Most AI rollouts lead with time savings. "You'll finish reports in half the time." That message lands for people who hate doing reports. It bounces off people who enjoy the creative challenge of figuring things out.
Instead, show what becomes possible. What can you create now that you couldn't before? What problems can you explore? What ideas can you test? Efficiency is a floor. Creativity is a ceiling. Sell the ceiling.
For Experiences: Make the first experience great.
People who value experiences form strong opinions based on their initial encounter with something new. If the first AI experience is a confusing interface, a hallucinated response, or a use case that doesn't match their actual work, they're done.
Design the onboarding around a quick win that feels genuinely useful. One prompt that saves them real frustration. One output that makes them say "Huh, that's actually helpful." That first experience sets the tone for everything after.
The Multiplier Effect
Here's what happens when you build AI initiatives around these values instead of against them.
The enthusiasts get more enthusiastic and more vocal. They become organic advocates because you're feeding what already drives them. Their excitement spreads through teams in ways that official "AI champions" programs never achieve.
The indifferent middle starts leaning in. When AI stops feeling like an efficiency mandate and starts feeling like an opportunity for growth, exploration, and creativity, the fence-sitters start picking a side.
Even the resistant group softens, not because they've converted, but because the peer pressure shifts. When the people they respect are excited about something, skepticism becomes harder to maintain publicly.
This is the shift I help organizations create. Not by convincing people that AI is inevitable, but by connecting AI to what they already care about.
The technology is the same for everyone. The enthusiasm isn't. The difference is in values.
And values can be activated on purpose, once you know what you're looking for.
Remember: if you know what people value, you can change what happens next.
Download free tools, data, and reports at www.davidallisoninc.com/resources
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