Should We Be Polite to AI?
By Movieguide® Contributor
A recent poll revealed the percentage of Americans who treat AI with politeness and respect and how many people are rude to it.
The poll revealed that the most common attitude towards AI is to treat it with proper manners; 44% of people said “I’m polite — I say hello, please and thank you and ask things nicely in general.”
Conversely, only 7% of respondents admitted “I’m sometimes impolite — I’ll swear or be abrupt with AI.” Meanwhile, 25% are “not polite, but I’m to the point — I ask and expect an answer,” and 24% chose the “none of the above” option.
The attitude towards AI was markedly different between younger and older generations. Fifty-six percent of Gen Zers are polite to the tech, while only 39% of boomers took this approach.
While 68% of those who are kind to AI said using manners is “just [their] way,” another 29% went a step further, stating, “everyone deserves to be treated with manners whether human or not.” Surprisingly, 39% of Americans are careful with their words to AI because they believe how they treat the tech now might be taken into consideration in the future — suggesting they believe there is a chance the tech will take over the world.
These statistics are certainly interesting and perhaps reveal people’s go-to attitude when interacting with others — whether human or not — but does it really matter how we treat AI? Kurtis Beaver, a director on the design team for Microsoft Copilot says it does.
“Using polite language sets a tone for the response,” Beaver said. “[AI] is a giant prediction machine making highly probabilistic guesses at what would plausibly come next. So when it clock politeness, it’s more likely to be polite back.”
“The same is true of your colleagues, strangers on the street, and the barista making you iced Americano: when you’re kind to them, they tend to be kind to you too,” he added. “Generative AI also mirrors the levels of professionalism, clarity, and detail in the prompts you provide. It’s a conversation — and it’s on the user to set the vibe.”
So while our attitude towards AI probably won’t affect our future, it still pays to be polite when interacting with the tech.
Movieguide® previously reported on AI use:
A recent study found that using artificial intelligence is becoming commonplace among U.S. adults.
A 2022 survey from Pew Research found that “a larger share of Americans say they are ‘more concerned than excited’ by the increased use of AI in daily life than say the opposite.”
However, despite limited enthusiasm for the tech a few years ago, Barna Group and Gloo found that “31 percent of U.S. adults say they use AI weekly or daily. Millennials have become especially frequent adopters, with 43 percent of them using AI at least weekly.”
Young adults are more likely to use AI compared to older adults.
Per Barna, “Millennials and Gen Z use AI most frequently in their personal lives, with over half (54%) of both groups using the technology ‘often’ or ‘sometimes.’ Meanwhile, older generations are far less likely to embrace AI (82% of Boomers and 91% of Elders say they use AI ‘not very much’ or ‘not at all’).”
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