OpenAI Employee Identifies Crucial Skill for 2024, Prioritizing Human Communication

Logan Kilpatrick, a member of the Developer Relations team at OpenAI, recently shared insights on the future of skills in the tech industry via a tweet. Contrary to the common belief that prompt engineering is a crucial skill for the future, Kilpatrick argues that effective human communication holds greater significance.

In his tweet, Kilpatrick challenges the notion that prompt engineering, often deemed essential for competitiveness in the future, is comparable to being an adept communicator with other humans. He asserts that reading, writing, and speaking are the three fundamental skills that will be pivotal in 2024, emphasizing their importance for effective communication with humans and their relevance in a world with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Drawing from his experience at OpenAI, where he focuses on empowering developers to work with the API and ChatGPT plugins, Kilpatrick highlights the significance of these human-centric skills. Additionally, he serves on the board of NumFOCUS, a non-profit organization supporting popular open-source scientific projects worldwide.

Kilpatrick contends that society is already engaging with ‘human general intelligence’ (HGI), and the skills required for interacting with AGI closely mirror those needed for HGI. He states, “You already have many instances of Human General Intelligence (HGI) in your life today! You likely work with and have deep relationships with HGI.”

This perspective offers a novel outlook on the future of skills in the tech industry, emphasizing the primacy of human communication skills over technical abilities like prompt engineering.