In the Guardian’s long-running readers’ reply series, one question this week turns to a small but surprisingly familiar habit: being polite to voice assistants and artificial intelligence.
The series invites readers to answer one another’s questions on topics that can range from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical ideas. This week’s prompt takes that broad approach in a slightly different direction, asking readers to consider a world in which people did not make mistakes.
Alongside that larger theme comes a more everyday question from Alison Williams in Toronto: “I always say please and thank you to my Alexa. Why is this? I am sure it doesn’t care. Is it worth being polite to artificial assistants?”
The question reflects a behavior many people recognize in themselves. Even when speaking to a device, some users still default to the same language of courtesy they would use with another person. The issue is not whether Alexa or a similar assistant has feelings, but whether the habit of politeness has value when the recipient is a machine.
The prompt also raises a broader point about how people interact with technology. Voice assistants are designed to respond to human speech, which can make them feel less like tools and more like conversational partners. That blurring of roles may help explain why phrases such as “please” and “thank you” come naturally, even when users know there is no human awareness on the other end.
At the same time, the question suggests a second possibility: that speaking politely to artificial assistants may be less about the machine and more about the speaker. Courtesy can become a habit, and habits formed in one setting often carry into others. The choice to use polite language with a device may therefore be tied to personal practice, routine, or an instinct to maintain a civil tone in everyday speech.
The Guardian’s readers’ reply format invites responses from readers rather than a single authoritative answer, so the discussion is open-ended. Questions in the series often use a simple scenario to explore larger ideas, and this one sits at the intersection of technology, behavior, and social custom.
For readers who want to contribute their own thoughts, the call for submissions remains open: send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Whether the answer is practical, philosophical, or simply a matter of habit, the question remains a timely one. As artificial assistants become more embedded in daily life, people continue to negotiate what kind of language feels appropriate when speaking to them. Politeness, even in a one-sided exchange, may say as much about human behavior as it does about the technology itself.
