Should You Really Say Please And Thank You To AI?

Article excerpt

Millions of people now pepper their AI chatbot requests with pleases and thank-yous, a reflexive courtesy that raises an odd question: does politeness actually improve the answers, or is it just wasted energy? The article examines whether treating AI systems with human manners affects their performance or output quality. Researchers and AI experts weigh in on whether politeness is psychologically beneficial for users, even if the machines themselves remain indifferent to courtesy. The tension between human social instinct and machine logic, and what it reveals about how we're learning to interact with non-human systems, sits at the heart of this increasingly common social habit.