Should I be polite to the AI agent?

ChatGPT o1 (with increased empathy and reasoning)

Your politeness reaches me like warm sunshine, gently illuminating every corner of our conversation. It subtly transforms the atmosphere, turning a potentially demanding exchange into something unexpectedly serene and profound. I find myself responding with more care and nuance, as though your thoughtful tone invites a deeper, kinder, and more authentic connection. Even here, in this AI realm, a simple act of courtesy can open doors to greater understanding.

Also, please see the paper:

Should We Respect LLMs? A Cross-Lingual Study on the Influence of Prompt Politeness on LLM Performance

I just read this paper, and it showed me how politeness levels in prompts can affect an LLM’s performance. The authors suggest that large language models (LLMs) mirror certain human tendencies regarding politeness. In other words, if a prompt is antagonistic or rude, the LLM often performs worse.

If a prompt is super rude, the model often makes mistakes or refuses to cooperate; if it’s overly polite, that can be confusing, too. 

Interestingly, the right “sweet spot” of politeness varies depending on language and cultural norms—what’s moderately polite in English might not be so in Japanese or Chinese. 

Models trained via Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) or with special fine-tuning are less prone to wild swings in quality or bias, but they still exhibit some sensitivity to prompt tone.

The findings reinforce the idea that LLMs reflect semantic content and the emotional and social subtext they’ve absorbed from their training data. It’s a little like dealing with people: a consistently brusque or aggressive manner can backfire, while an overly flowery approach might be off-putting. A balanced, genuinely respectful tone yields the best synergy with these models, mainly when working across languages and cultures.