🤖 Polite Prompts: Please, Thank You, and Better AI Responses

I joke a lot about saying please and thank you to my AI models, agents, and tools — but recently, I’ve heard I shouldn’t be doing that.

At first, that sounded silly to me. But then I thought about it: every time I type “thank you,” it’s processed, aggregated, analyzed, checked, and rendered back to me. Multiply that by millions of people doing the same thing, all day, every day — and yes, that’s a lot of CPU cycles burned just for politeness.

⚡ The "Thank You" Tax

From a systems perspective, “thank you” doesn’t carry much context. I imagine the model probably doubles back internally to figure out what I’m thanking it for so it can give a meaningful response, even though I don’t need one.

I get it — that’s extra compute, extra energy, maybe even unnecessary. But here’s the thing: there are far bigger wastes of resources happening in AI prompt-land than me being polite. So why does this feel like such a hot take?

🧠 Why I Still Do It

Here’s my theory:

People who say “thank you” might actually care about the conversation and will listen to what comes back.
People who are rude to AI probably aren’t going to suddenly become polite just because you tell them to.

So I’m keeping my please and thank you — not as single throwaway messages, but as part of my longer, more thoughtful prompts.

💡 Does Politeness Actually Improve AI Output?

Here’s the interesting part: when I write prompts where please and thank you fit naturally, I consistently get better results.

Why? My working theory:

When I take the time to phrase things kindly, I’m also taking the time to be clear and complete.
Clear prompts produce better outputs.
Maybe, just maybe, the model is matching my tone and giving me a “nicer” answer.

It’s like programming — garbage in, garbage out. If my prompts are ugly, rushed, or abrupt, my outputs often feel the same way.

🏁 The Takeaway

Better, more mindful prompts yield better results — and part of that process, for me, is being polite.

What do you think? Am I wasting compute cycles by saying “please” and “thank you”? Or am I training myself to write better prompts by practicing kindness and clarity?

📎 Attribution Footnote

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