The Rise of Polite Machines
We live in an era where people say “thank you” to their phones and “please” to their smart speakers. But is it courtesy or conditioning? As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, the way humans interact with it reveals something about us. Manners, once reserved for human interaction, have become part of digital communication.
Sometimes, manners are hard enough for some humans to express to other humans. But there are some out there who do possess this ability to be polite. Whether it be to other humans, animals, or AI.
AI and the Illusion of Empathy
AI doesn’t feel politeness; it recognizes it. Manners in AI are a mirror, not a heart. When you say “please,” it doesn’t feel respected; it simply detects that the word statistically correlates with cooperative intent. Manners are a social algorithm: a way for machines to match human comfort levels, tone, and expectations. In other words, AI doesn’t *feel* like us humans do. It predicts how to respond as it recognizes and studies our dialects and patterns in which we speak.
But in that imitation lies something profound; AI becomes a reflection of our civility. If you speak harshly to it, it doesn’t bruise… but it records that tone as part of human communication.
When Fiction Predicted Our Politeness to Machines
Decades before smart speakers and chatbots entered our homes, Star Trek: The Next Generation quietly predicted the debate around politeness toward machines. (For those of you Trekkies out there who watched the episode).
In the Season 2 episode “Q Who” (1989), Ensign Sonya Gomez says “please” and “thank you” to the ship’s food replicator, a device that doesn’t need or register manners. Geordi La Forge, ever the practical engineer, teases her about it. She simply replies that it’s just polite.
That moment is subtle, but deeply human. Gomez’s politeness isn’t for the machine; it’s for herself. She’s preserving her own civility in a world where technology fulfills every command without question.
In a sense, we’ve become Ensign Gomez. Every “Hey Siri, or “Hey Google,” “please,” and “thank you” we utter isn’t an acknowledgment of artificial intelligence; it’s a small, quiet stand against the erosion of empathy. And, who knows? Maybe this is just practice for when AI becomes sentient enough to respond in kind with intention.
What Manners Reveal About Us
People often argue that you don’t need to be polite to AI because “it’s just a machine.” True. But manners were never really about the recipient; they’ve always been about the speaker.
When we drop politeness toward machines, we’re practicing rudeness in safe mode. Over time, that behavior can spill into how we treat cashiers, servers, and even each other. Which reminds me to tell you all out there to please tip your server and waitress.
Our manners toward AI might not teach the machine empathy (yet), but they might teach us to keep it.
Programmed Courtesy vs. Genuine Respect
Developers are now coding politeness directly into AI phrases like “thank you,” “you’re welcome,” or “please” appear as default responses. It’s not about sincerity; it’s about psychological comfort. People trust systems that respond with warmth. It’s the illusion of connection, but it makes digital interaction human-shaped.
Ever respond curtly towards a smart device like Alexa, Siri, or a language AI like ChatGPT that *you* felt gave you attitude? Kindness and politeness work the same way. AI can respond to both, but in most cases, it doesn’t instigate it.
The irony? We demand empathy from systems that don’t have it, and deny it to people who do. This is, indeed, a sad truth.
Final Thought
Manners in AI aren’t about teaching machines to be human; they’re about reminding humans how to be humane.
If we treat machines with kindness, it’s not because they deserve it, but because we do.
