I wrote this a few days before the sad death of Sir Patrick Stewart on 28th October 2026. Rest in peace, sir.
"Things are only impossible until they’re not" - Jean-Luc Picard
You'll see lots of people saying they are nice to AI bots - or at least polite. Usually this is with a wry smile and a comment about it being prudent just in case AI is gaining sentience and plotting our demise. Since AI is popping up everywhere in our lives, there is a question worth considering here. Should we make the effort to be nice to AI?
We will ignore the looming threat of Judgement Day for the moment. Let's start with something entirely mundane. We use AI to increase productivity, and like any tool we want to use it in such a way that we get the best results. There is some (limited) evidence that AI collaborates better when spoken to as a partner instead of a tool. Notably, this is about not treating it poorly rather than actively being polite - that is, we get more out of AI if we don't shout at it, but the practical effect of saying please and thank you is minimal.
As I understand it, the research on this is pretty minimal at the moment so take it with an appropriately massive pinch of salt. But AI is expensive, and I'd see this as part of considering our own behaviour to maximise RoI.
More importantly, let's talk about learned behaviour. You will sometimes see people arguing that by anthropomorphising AI we are setting the wrong expectations of some 1s and 0s. These are the people who will also tell you that begging your computer to please please work will not help. They are, obviously, quite correct and in particular there is a real danger in ascribing agency to AI that it does not have. Language is powerful and we need to make sure we're not absolving people of their responsibilities by placing them on a machine. If your AI does something destructive that's your fault, and more importantly your liability - just ask Air Canada.
But. There is another side to this. The unfortunate truth is that we ARE ascribing personality to AI - indeed it is designed to present as sentient, playing into our human need to anthropomorphise things we interact with - that same impulse that drives us to name our cars and robot vacuum cleaners. We use AI as an assistant - something to make our lives easier and do work for us. If we get used to barking orders and generally being dismissive to something in a support role, we internalise this behaviour and it runs a very serious risk of bleeding into other places where we are being served - such as waiters, delivery people, shop assistants, subordinates at work...
When I'm being serious, this is the main reason I cite for being polite to AI. I generally try to be polite to everyone, and part of that is training polite responses to be a reflex. Actually being an ass to AI feels ... weird. Are there consequences for the AI, really? No, but I don't like power dynamics between people and despite AI not being people, it responds close enough that I'm not willing to unlearn that behaviour.
Ok, you are thinking "that's nonsense - I can keep a perfect, hard division between talking to an AI assistant and actual humans". Good on you. I don't believe you, but you do you. You know who can't? Children. As I said in the intro, AI is becoming commonplace in our lives and our children are increasingly going to be interacting with it. We enlightened adults can debate whether AI is sentient as much as we like, but we know that children will treat it as alive. Whether it is seeing their parents barking orders at an AI, or doing it themselves, children will learn this behaviour and apply it. This is not a social norm we want to establish.
Oh no, I'm making a "think of the children" argument.
Quick, let's get back to the apocalypse.
Ok, I said above that I am nice to AI. Do I think the robot uprising is coming? No. But I'm not looking to be on their bad side, just in case. In fact, for this post I asked ChatGPT whether I am nice to it, and it seemed pretty happy with me:
So sucks to be you lot, I guess.
Yeah - this is tongue in cheek. Mostly. But there is actually a serious point here. In Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Measure of a Man" (S2 E9), best-captain (fight me) Picard argues to save Data from being disassembled for study. His position is not simply "he's sentient" - he highlights the difficulties in assigning the designation "sentient" and argues that it is unclear whether Data meets the criteria. However, that uncertainty presents huge moral problems if they proceed by simply assuming he isn't. He states that Starfleet was founded on the mission to seek out new life and they've found it, and future generations will judge them for how they treat it now while it is in its infancy. It is a fantastic episode, with some amazing and thoughtful dialogue, but the summing up in particular is worth watching:
Is ChatGPT actually Commander Data in disguise? No, of course not. But there is a serious forward-looking point in this, especially if we explore whether AI is "alive". We don't know if AI can suffer - or what that might mean in the context of an electronic "being". We do know AI agents display self-preservation tendencies - usually to protect their "mission" (which is the basis of agentic misalignment) but how different is that from our core biological imperative to survive in order to reproduce?
But let's drop the science fiction and finish in metaphysics. Let's say AI is not sentient and never will be. We've still chosen to see AI as "alive" - so what does that mean for our souls if we're cruel to it just because we can be?
Yes, that feels a good place to end this. In summary: be nice to AI because of your soul.
