Afraid of a machine uprising — why people are polite to chatbots

The survey of more than a thousand respondents from the United States and the UK showed that about 70% of AI users are polite when communicating with chatbots like ChatGPT. At the same time, 67% of Americans and 71% of British regularly say "please" and "thank you" when interacting with AI.

Tech Radar writes about it.

Why people thank chatbots

A total of 510 respondents from the United States and 518 from the UK took part in the research. However, only the majority of them do it out of common courtesy.

Among Americans who are polite, 82% said that being polite to AI is simply the right thing to do, regardless of whether you are talking to a human or a robot. However, about 18% of polite respondents admitted that they do so out of caution in case of a potential robot uprising in the future.

Among the British, the figure is almost the same: 83% are polite simply because it is the right thing to do, and 17% are afraid of the consequences of the "machine uprising".

At the same time, among those who do not observe politeness, the majority argue that it is a desire to save time and do not see the point in polite language for a digital interlocutor.

Experts have different opinions on the necessity of being polite to AI. For example, CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood emphasizes the importance of maintaining politeness as a norm to prevent rude behaviour from being transferred to ordinary human interactions.

At the same time, TechRadar Senior Writer John-Anthony Disotto is surprised by the high level of politeness, noting that it is likely a consequence of subconscious fear of the unknown.

However, being polite to AI can also have practical benefits. According to an expert from Botify, polite queries can improve the efficiency of AI responses by up to 30%.

As a reminder, Opera released an AI agent for its browser. It can make purchases, book hotel rooms, and much more on its own.

We also wrote that Google officially unveiled the free version of its AI tool for programmers. Gemini Code Assist can automatically complete and edit code while it is being written.