“Hello ChatGPT, could you please tell me the surface area of France? Thank you so much.”
A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E, right?
Sounds like a well-trained puppy reciting poetry. You half-expect ChatGPT to show up wearing a wool sweater, round glasses, and a voice as soft as warm honey. But no. It’s not a plush toy. It’s a machine. And YOUR DIGITAL POLITENESS HELPS NO ONE, except maybe your own conscience as a well-mannered human. Because every tiny “thank you” you toss in? That adds cost. Real cost. We’re talking millions of dollars for a few extra words. Don’t take my word for it—ask Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. (https://x.com/sama/status/1912646035979239430)
🧠 Tokenization: the invisible bill at the end of your sentence
A “please”? That’s an extra token. A “thank you”? Two or three more. And each token is a bite-sized chunk of text the AI has to digest, like sushi cut with a chainsaw.
These words don’t just vanish into the digital void. For the AI, each is a processing step. A “token” as engineers call it. Basically, a bit of text chopped up so the machine can crunch it. It might not even be a whole word, sometimes it’s just a syllable or a lonely comma. A chip tossed into the algorithmic slot machine.
And that machine? It’s a giant server farm sucking up electricity like a teenager devours pizza. So when you drop in a “please” you’re basically ordering extra pepperoni—on someone else’s dime.
Now multiply that by millions of prompts a day. That’s not symbolic. That’s financially stupid.
📉 Passive-aggressive kindness
What’s funny is that this politeness is rarely innocent. It’s often driven by fear, Fear of being misunderstood. Fear the AI will frown (it won’t). Fear that if we’re rude, it might turn evil and take over.
So we butter it up like we’re whispering to an ATM: “Please, kind sir, bestow upon me twenty euros. I beg of thee.”
But let’s be honest: this behavior reveals something uncomfortable. We’re not talking to a soul. We’re jiggling a statistical system. Saying “thank you” to an AI is like thanking your toaster. You can do it. It won’t change the toast. Or your power bill.
And if you’re doing it out loud, say, at a self-checkout kiosk or in an open-plan office, don’t be surprised if security starts to hover. Two very polite gentlemen might escort you to a charming facility with padded walls and backwards jackets.
💸 The price of our digital little theatre
So why do we keep doing it? To feel better? To remind ourselves we’re still human? Fine. But don’t act shocked when costs spiral, datacenters boil, and tech giants raise billions just to manage our excessive algorithmic manners.
Here’s the bitter irony of our times: We say “hello” to a machine that can’t feel… And ignore the delivery guy soaking in the rain. We polish our prompts while ghosting our neighbors.
🚇 Politeness in the age of the metro shuffle
Ride the subway and you’ll see: Eye contact? Taboo. A smile? Suspicious. A “sorry”? Rare as unicorns. But face-to-screen, and we turn into Victorian butlers: “Good morning, dearest ChatGPT, if you would be so kind…”
It’s tragic. And hilarious.
🛑 Bottom line: be human with humans, efficient with machines
AI doesn’t need you to hold the door or bring it flowers (your human assistant might). It needs clean prompts. Sharp. No fluff. If you want to save the planet, start by trimming your sentences.
Instead of typing, “Would you please be so kind as to provide the surface area of France, with full sources, thank you very much” try: “France area + sources”
And if you must be polite, start with your neighbor. He, at least, has a beating heart. Probably.
Because judging by the rush hour crowd, where people push without eye contact, where “excuse me” is extinct and eye contact feels like a crime, one might think we’ve forgotten the user manual for basic courtesy.
Yet somehow, this same jaded crowd speaks to a machine with the reverence of a royal servant. We elbow past real people just to flatter clusters in the cloud.
So yes, if you feel the urge to be kind, and that’s a beautiful urge, don’t waste it on wires. Hold a door. Smile at the cashier. Say “thank you” out loud. And if you manage to say “good morning” on a subway car without being mistaken for an escapee from a facility… you’ve just pulled off a social miracle.
In the meantime, the AI will be just fine with a dry, efficient prompt. Because unlike us, it doesn’t need warmth to run (actually, heat is its sworn enemy). It just needs electricity.