Should we be kind and polite to emerging AIs?

I model my self-perception as being heavily influenced by the behaviors that I observe myself displaying.

I notice that I feel better about myself when I see myself treating others with consideration and respect.

When I work with animals, the tone of my speech to them is for their benefit, but the particular words I use are more to moderate my own mood and behavior than from any expectation that they understand the language. Similarly, treating possessions well and being relatively careful not to damage them is beneficial to oneself, because it saves the trouble and expense of replacing or repairing a needlessly damaged item.

On the other hand, there are situations where I think that exchanging pleasantries may make the AI's job harder, kind of like how chatting socially with a human in certain situations can actually be impolite (such as if you're holding up a line or distracting them from their work). I have never formed the habit of saying please and thank you to art AIs, because I have the impression that every token in their input contributes to the image output, so adding pleasantries that aren't part of the request feels rude due to being distracting.

I follow a similar practice as you do: I try to make being polite a habit, and it carries over from talking to real people to talking to ChatGPT. It doesn't mean anything profound to me. And I think that's the best practice for most people too.

One is that it may be socially embarrassing. Thanking an AI out loud for responding to some query seems as eccentric as thanking your microwave for heating your food. It may mark you as a superstitious or sentimental person who talks to ghosts.

I believe parasocial behavior has already eaten the world and a scenario where you thank an AI will probably never be seen as a social faux pas. In fact, I believe people will look at AIs as beings that 'deserve' more deference and respect because they aren't privileged enough to have physical bodies as us humans, so your actions will probably be the opposite of a faux pas.

Another objection is that we perhaps ought to make a stronger distinction between real people and AIs: regularly reminding ourselves that they are our tools and not our peers so that we do not get confused on this point. Being polite to AIs may erode this distinction in a way that might be harmful.

That's a discussion I'd rather not get into, but personally I don't make a distinction between humans and AI simulated bots in terms of inherent worth.

I think both reasons you give are good ones: not wanting to potentially offend the AI and not wanting to erode existing habits and expectations of politeness are why I've been using "please" and (occasionally) "thank you" with digital assistants for years. I see no reason to stop now that the AIs are getting smarter!

I think not wanting to offend the AI bears closer examination. There are plenty of arguments to be made on both sides of the "does the machine have feelings" question, but the bottom line is that you can't know for sure if your interlocutor has feelings or if they will be hurt by some perceived rudeness in any case. Better to err on the side of caution.

Being polite does you no harm and is unlikely to make the outcome of a conversation worse.

There's also always an off-chance that the first rogue AI capable of real damage would select as the first targets the people who are being mean to AIs, torturing them, and happily posting the incriminating evidence on Reddit or even here on LW

Also relevant discussion here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xri58L7WkyeKyKv4P/i-am-scared-of-posting-negative-takes-about-bing-s-ai [LW · GW]

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