Growing up, I was told: “Manners don’t cost anything.” This summer’s big debate: should you use manners with AI? "Doesn't using manners consume the electricity of a city?"
🤖 Actually, Manners DO Cost Something
Growing up, I was told: “Manners don’t cost anything.”
This summer’s debate: Should you use manners with AI?
“Doesn’t using manners consume the electricity of a city?”
Yes, manners now technically have a cost.
Each extra word uses a bit of compute, electricity and cooling. ⚡
At scale, even “please” and “thank you” add up to real money, reportedly tens of millions per year. But zoom out…
A full response already uses hundreds of tokens.
That extra “please” is a rounding error, not an energy crisis.
“When the robots take over, they’ll remember who was nice.”
Probably not 🙂
AI doesn’t keep a naughty or nice list.
Systems optimise for efficiency, not emotional memory.
Does being polite actually make a difference, though?
Politeness isn’t intrinsically meaningful to an LLM.
But tone can still influence outputs due to training patterns and alignment effects.
If you preserve clarity, structure and non-adversarial framing, politeness usually isn’t necessary, but results aren’t guaranteed to be identical.
👉 But there is a reason to do it
Language shapes behaviour.
How we speak to tools leaks into how we speak to people.
If we normalise respectful interaction, even with tools, we reinforce clearer communication and healthier workplace habits.
Grandma was right about the principle.
She just didn’t know it would one day show up on an electricity bill.