Please and Thank you

Picture this: you're chatting with a machine that might soon run half your life, and you can’t even throw in a “please”? Bold. Sure, Sam Altman quipped that being polite to ChatGPT might cost “tens of millions of dollars” in electricity. But what if dropping courtesy isn’t just a watt-saving measure? What if it's rewiring us to treat humans and machines like lifeless interfaces? Because if the bots ever start running the show, you’ll want a spotless politeness record. “Please” might be the cheapest insurance policy you’ll ever buy against future chaos, both human and robotic.

Now, don’t roll your eyes — this isn’t some grandma’s lecture about manners for manners’ sake. “Please” didn’t show up just to waste breath. It sauntered onto the scene in the 14th century, short for “if it pleases you,” a linguistic olive branch, not a formality. And “thank you”? That’s Old English þancian, meaning gratitude. These little words weren’t stitched into our language because people were bored. They were resilience tools. Social WD-40 for a world where misreading a vibe could spark a duel (yes, even over sourdough).

Fast forward to now. Sure, most of us aren’t sword-fighting over carbs, but let’s not pretend modern life isn’t its own kind of brutal. Office politics, comment-section bloodbaths, burnout parading around as hustle culture. Turns out, forgetting how to be polite still comes with a body count. We’re not more evolved; we’re just faster at melting down.

That’s why politeness matters. It’s not decoration, it’s infrastructure. When you say, “please,” you lower the emotional temperature of a request. When you say, “thank you,” you’re not just being nice—you’re keeping the reciprocity loop from snapping. Sociologist Erving Goffman called these interactions “rituals,” and that tracks. Rituals are what hold things together when logic taps out.

And if you grew up in the South like I did, you know manners aren’t optional — they’re tactical. “Yes, ma’am” isn’t just respect; it’s social jiu-jitsu. Down here, a sweet smile and a well-placed “bless your heart” can either soothe a soul or deliver a full-body takedown. Politeness isn’t always gentle. It’s a biscuit with a grudge: warm on the outside, but it will absolutely choke you if you’re not paying attention. That’s why “please” and “thank you” aren’t fluff, they’re survival tools with a drawl.

Every polite prompt you give a chatbot might cost a sliver of a cent in compute. But what it buys us? A buffer against turning everyday life into a WWE match in the checkout line.

And let’s be real, it’s not like you have to break the power grid to be decent. Including a “please” at the start of a request or a “thank you” at the end isn’t nearly as energy costly as sending them as standalone prompts. But those small additions still pack a punch. A sprinkle of consideration, a dash of humility, and a nod to mutual respect… all without setting off the climate alarm. That’s the kind of cost-effective humanity we can afford to keep.

Need more proof? Let’s talk pandemic. Lock a bunch of kids away from each other for two years and suddenly crayon time turns into a prison riot. Researchers saw a legit drop in social skills, and parents are still dealing with the fallout. Turns out resilience doesn’t grow in isolation. It grows through messy, frustrating, real-life interaction. And politeness is the invisible scaffolding that keeps it all from collapsing.

Here’s where it gets spicy: how we talk to AI trains us as much as it trains the machine. Kids are already barking orders at Alexa like she’s some long-suffering butler. Let that settle in. If they grow up thinking command-only communication is normal, that attitude doesn’t stay with the tech. It seeps into how they treat everyone. Not because machines have feelings (they don’t), but because we do.

So yeah, Altman was worried about wasted kilowatts. But the real invoice comes in the form of corroded trust, dying reciprocity, thankless jobs, and a generation raised to transact instead of connect. That’s not just expensive. It’s unsustainable.

Cutting “please” to save CPU is like ripping out your car’s airbags to boost mileage. Sure, you might get farther on less. But you’re toast the moment something goes sideways.

At AetherForge, we get it. Resilience doesn’t come from shiny tech and flashy slogans. It comes from boring, unsexy protocols: password hygiene, emergency drills, and yeah, politeness. Saying “please” and “thank you” might feel small but ditching them makes you brittle. Not efficient — fragile.

So go ahead. Waste the electrons. Be polite to your chatbot. Thank your barista like a human being. The real cost of courtesy isn’t the energy. It’s what happens when we decide we’re too busy, too modern, too clever to be decent.

And hey, if the machines do end up steering the ship, you’ll want to be on record as one of the nice ones. Not just for your future robot overlords, but because decency is still the best kind of resilience. Manners aren’t obsolete. They’re our last line of defense. And sometimes, they're the sharpest tool in the drawer—especially when they come with a slow smile and a side of grits.