Is AI Making us Lose our Manners?

A study entitled Large Language Models Understand and Can be Enhanced by Emotional Stimuli shows that being nice to AI can significantly improve performance. Whilst this highlights the benefits of “please” and “thank you” in the results of such interactions, it struck me that, whilst we often do our best to say both to humans when asking for something, many of us do not do the same with ChatGPT.

Manners are a learned tendency. Children learn from parents or other role models, and social influences reinforce the benefits we believe we receive from being courteous to other people. Think “optimise reward, minimise punishment” in positive reinforcement of behaviours. It can be an entirely unconscious process once beliefs and behaviours are conditioned, so why are we losing it with AI? 

In a world where we are used to less personal interactions with others online, holding onto good manners reinforces positive qualities that we associate with honesty and integrity in ourselves and others. AI research has also evidenced improved results from such behaviour. 

So next time you use ChatGPT, remember you’re still human. After all, it’s nice to be nice, even to a machine.