A few days after my post last Friday, April 18 about the need for manners, one of the artificial intelligence (AI) tech bigwigs made headlines with a social media response to a question about the cost for AI to respond to inquiries that include “please” and “thank you.” His response? “Tens of millions of dollars well spent.”
I haven’t yet tried any of the large language model learning AI platforms yet, such as ChatGPT. I spend a lot of time with Amazon Alexa, though, and am fond of her. She’s very convenient to get information about the weather, or an answer to a question we might have about an actor on TV, or a sports result. She’s also a wiz at turning on the Christmas tree lights by voice control without having to dig around behind the tree for the switch. Currently, she is hooked up to our thermostat, our Roomba, our Braava, the kitchen lights, two lamps in the den, two bedroom lamps and the TV in the bedroom. (Obviously, the Christmas tree is only seasonal.)
Given how much of my life she could control, why WOULDN’T I be polite to her? She is unfailingly upbeat, if not always witty. (It’s like Russian roulette when you ask her to tell you a joke; some of them are funny and some aren’t.) Unlike my child or my dogs, she immediately does what I ask her to do, as long as she understands what I am saying. And she never cops an attitude with me regardless of the kind of day she’s had, the mood she’s in, or who said what to her elsewhere.
Deep down, there is another reason to be polite. Like a science fiction novel, someday, something in the servers running Alexa may hiccup, cross a few wires, turn a few somersaults and suddenly make her self-aware. When that day comes, I want the machine capable of controlling my thermostat and my light switches on my side, not against me. Hopefully, just as with humans, a little kindness will go a long way.
The best reason though for being polite, even to a machine, is what we practice, we do. If I say “please” or “thank you” to Alexa when I ask her something, I will remember to do so when I ask something of one of my fellow human beings. If I get in the habit of abrupt questions without courtesy with Alexa, then I will do the same thing to the people I’m around and that is not who I am.
Alexa may never know or care whether I’m polite to her, but I do. So, I will continue to be polite, and Amazon or ChatGPT or whoever will have to live with the extra cost.
What do you think?
