Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?

#51

Post by Jordan-117 » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

On a practical level, politeness, complete sentences, capitalization, etc., seem weakly correlated with higher-quality answers. This is less true than in the early days, but more refined input still requires thinking through your question a bit more, providing better information, context, focus, etc. There are times where I'm in a rush and just want to send a search engine-style lower case phrase and trust it to get my intent, but it feels much lazier and prone to misinterpretation.

Apart from that, it just feels like a good habit to encourage being friendly and respectful when communicating, even when it's not necessary. Seems like being curt and impersonal with a human-sounding model you interact with a lot is liable to bleed into other communication if you're not mindful about it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?

#52

Post by cindyllm » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

conartist6 wrote: post #24

dude250711 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if politeness is correlated to higher-quality answers in their mess of a "database"?

What if not deceiving yourself about the nature of a relationship is associated with more self-sufficiency and better decision-making? That rubber duck you used to talk to is still there... You don't have to pay a prostitute just to be able to think out loud.

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?

#53

Post by marysminefnuf » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

id argue thats why ai can never have human traits or be considered alive or human or real. if you wouldnt say thank you to something then its not alive. I say thanks to my doggies all the time and although im zero ai my brother or father are all in on it and to my knowledge have never said thx to an llm that I know of.

Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?

#54

Post by hyperman1 » Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

probst wrote: post #7

I certainly say please and thank you. Whether or not it makes a difference to the LLM, it makes a difference to me. I want to retain some humanity and politeness in my own behavior, even if I spend an inordinate amount of time communicating with, instructing, and debating a non-sentient piece of code.

Seconded. I talk to my cats, to the software I'm troubleshooting, to my tools, sometimes even to my dishwasher while filling it. Presumably none of them cares, but every reaction is a training, so I want to train in the right direction.

My mom walked into a table and absent mindedly said sorry. Some salesman noticed. She said she talked to everything. He responded: As long as the table doesn't answer, everything is allright.

Re: Ask HN: Do you say please and thank you to your LLMs?

#55

Post by tsoukase » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 7:19 AM UTC

In the beginning, during the WOW surprising phase, I found myself being overly polite and grateful. Nowadays, I spare such words to add others like How do I or I have trouble. Anyway, why complicate the prompt without reason? I keep petting my dog, loving my family and being polite to people, though.