Courtesy

A reporter for Business Insider writes:

Recently, my family group chat buzzed when I asked if we should say "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT when making requests. My mother, always polite, insisted on using manners with AI to "keep myself human."

As AI like ChatGPT becomes part of daily life, our interactions with these tools are shaping new social norms. Digital etiquette expert Elaine Swann notes that, just as we've adapted to new technology—like knowing not to take phone calls on speaker in public—we're still figuring out how to treat AI bots.

Kelsey Vlamis, another Business Insider reporter, noticed this shift personally. While vacationing in Italy, her husband had to stop himself from interrupting their tour guide with rapid-fire questions, realizing that’s how he interacts with ChatGPT but not with people. "That is not, in fact, how we talk to human beings," Vlamis said.

Swann emphasizes that maintaining respect in all interactions—human or digital—is important. After OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed on X that it costs "tens of millions of dollars" to process polite phrases like "please" and "thank you" sent to ChatGPT, Swann argued that it’s up to companies to make this more efficient, not for users to drop politeness.

"This is the world that we create for ourselves," Swann said. "And AI should also understand that this is how we speak to one another, because we're teaching it to give that back to us."

Altman, for his part, believes the expense is justified, saying the money spent on polite requests to ChatGPT is money "well spent."

As we navigate this new era, how we interact with AI may shape not just our technology, but our humanity as well.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story about politeness toward AI can be used to illustrate several Biblical themes, such as human dignity, respectful communication, and ethical responsibility. 1) Kindness – Making kindness a habit reflects the nature of God (Eph. 4:32); 2) Human nature – The mother’s desire to “keep myself human” through politeness reflects the imperative of Col. 3:12 “Clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” 3) Respect for others - The husband’s struggle to avoid ChatGPT-style interruptions with his tour guide highlights the tension between efficiency and humility (Phil. 2:3-4).

A pastor and his family on an early morning flight had been delayed for hours and were feeling sleep-deprived and anxious. As the plane landed, another family behind them attempted to exit quickly, with the teenager rushing ahead. The pastor shares:

I stuck my arm into the aisle to block the rest of the family from passing, like I was Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. “None shall pass.” “We’re all trying to get off this plane,” I said to the family, “Let’s wait our turn!”

They had words with me that I cannot share here and pushed past my arm. I was fuming.

As the passenger disembarked, a flight attendant approached, explaining that the teenage girl had been experiencing a panic attack and needed assistance. The family had been trying to help her. The family was not rude; they were desperate.

How did I, a former chaplain trained to notice physiological signs of stress, miss that this young lady needed help? How did I let my core value of courtesy block my capacity to see what was really going on?

I was operating out of assumption and unable to see reality. Rather than see that this young lady needed help getting off the plane, all I could see was a family rudely skipping the line, and I must intervene.

Whether we move toward self-righteousness or self-protection, the common denominator is self. This is what every follower of God has in common: We get caught up in ourselves, we get triggered, we forget others, and we forget the Lord.

For decades, a social psychologist named John Bargh has conducted studies on the way words affect behavior. In one such study, undergraduate students were given a scrambled-sentence test. One version of the test was sprinkled with rude words like “disturb,” “bother,” and “intrude.” Another version was sprinkled with polite words like “respect,” “considerate,” and “yield.” The subjects thought they were taking tests measuring lan­guage ability, but they were actually being subconsciously primed by those words.

Priming is a psychological phenomenon related to stimulus and response, and words are the lead actors. The word “nurse” is recognized more quickly if it’s preceded by the word “doctor.” The same goes for “dog” and “wolf.” Why? These words are semantic primes that cause you to think in categories. If I say Empire State Building, it puts you in a New York state of mind. In the same sense, the word “please” is a politeness prime.

After taking the five-minute scrambled-sentence test, stu­dents were supposed to walk down the hall and talk to the person running the experiment about their next assignment. However, an actor was strategically engaged in conversation with the researcher when the students arrived. The goal? Psychologist Bargh wanted to see whether the subjects who were primed with polite words would wait longer before interrupting than those who were primed with rude words.

The result? Sixty-five percent of the group primed with rude words interrupted the conversation. Those primed with polite words? Eighty-two percent of them never interrupted at all. If the test hadn't timed out at ten minutes, who knows how long they would have waited?

Possible Preaching Angle:

A few polite words. What difference do they make? In quantitative terms, they can make a 47% difference. Don’t underestimate the power of polite words.

When a video of an American Airlines pilot scolding his passengers during a pre-flight announcement went viral, some people deemed it patronizing. Others are hailing the pilot’s speech as an example of strong leadership—at a time when passengers desperately need it.

In the video the pilot set some ground rules for his passengers—including what they should expect from their flight attendants, and how they should treat each other during the journey.

The pilot said, “Remember, the flight attendants are here for your safety. After that they’re here to make your flight more enjoyable. They’re going to take care of you guys but you will listen to what they have to say because they represent my will in the cabin, and my will is what matters.”

The pilot added: “Be nice to each other. Be respectful to each other. I shouldn’t have to say that ... But I have to say it every single flight, because people don’t. And they’re selfish and rude, and we won’t have it.” He told passengers to store their bags properly, avoid leaning or falling asleep on other people, and use headphones instead of playing audio out loud on speakers.

The speech—“a little bit of fatherhood,” as the pilot deemed it—serves as a counterpoint to a bevy of recent videos depicting outbursts aboard aircrafts. Airlines have seen a significant uptick in unruly passenger reports: nearly 2,500 in 2020 and 6,000 in 2021, compared to roughly 1,200 in 2019 and less than 1,000 in years prior, according to FAA data.

The FAA has referred more than 250 of those cases to the Federal Bureau of Investigations since 2021, a move reserved for particularly violent incidents.

Police officer Chris Ford tries to be courteous in all of the interactions he has with citizens during his shifts on traffic patrol. All of Ford’s interactions are captured by the mandatory body cams on his person. But there is also an additional measure that helps motivate him to be pleasant and professional, even when members of the public are standoffish, irritated, or just flat-out rude.

Ford is required to hand out his business card to everyone he interacts with, and on the back is a QR-code that encourages citizens to rate their interactions with him. Using a star-based system called Guardian Score, officers are rated on criteria such as communication, listening skills, and fairness. According to founder Burke Brownfeld, the program is designed to correct the traditional power imbalance between law enforcement officers and the citizens to whom they are supposed to be accountable.

Ellsworth Weave, president of the local NAACP branch said, “It’s a way of letting the community know that the police are not here to attack you. They are there to help you and protect you.”

Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum says programs like Guardian Score are a great way to measure the quality of officer engagement. “At a time when many people are questioning police accountability and how police deal with citizens, police departments are looking for ways to measure how they are doing. And this is one of them.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christlike leadership demands that reputations be backed up by truthful accounts of actions. If/when leaders make mistakes, they should own up to them and do their best to do better.

Once, while speaking on the topic of grace in Toronto, I asked the audience about their own experiences conveying grace to others. One woman shocked us all: "I feel called to minister to telephone marketers. You know, the kind who call at inconvenient hours and deliver their spiel before you can say a word." Immediately I flashed back to the times I have responded rudely or simply hung up. She continued:

All day long these sales callers hear people curse at them and slam the phone down. I listen attentively to their pitch, then I try to respond kindly, though I almost never buy what they're selling. Instead, I ask about their personal life and whether they have any concerns I can pray for. Often they ask me to pray with them over the phone, and sometimes they are in tears. They're people, after all, probably underpaid, and they're surprised when someone treats them with common courtesy.

Hearing such stories, I am aware how often I miss possible hinge moments in my own interactions with people. I marvel at the Toronto woman's gracious response and think of the times I get irritated with marketers and with employees on computer help lines who don't speak good English. I catch myself treating store cashiers and Starbucks baristas as if they were machines, not persons … Subtly or not so subtly, I let the other person know that I've been interrupted and need to get back to work. In the process, I miss golden opportunities to dispense grace.

[C]ivility, which I take to be a strong virtue and not simply wimpishness, requires that we not try to cram our beliefs down anybody's throats, whether we be Christian or non-Christian. But that we all try to articulate as persuasively as we can, what it is we hope that others will be persuaded.

According to the Research Institute of America's recent study, here's what service-providing organizations can expect from dissatisfied customers:

They will hear nothing from 96 percent of customers who receive rude or discourteous service.

Each of these dissatisfied customers will tell his or her story to an average of nine other people.

Of those 4 percent who do voice their dissatisfaction, between 54 and 70 percent will use the organization's services again if the complaint is resolved. That percentage goes as high as 95 percent if the complaint is resolved quickly.

68 percent of those who sever the relationship with the service organization do so because of the organization's indifference.

An English one-liner that has always amused me is: "A gentleman is one who uses the butter knife when he is alone." In other words, it's what someone does when no one's watching that indicates the true person.