Blade Runner.
The Terminator.
The Matrix.
I, Robot.
Ex Machina.
Those are just a smattering of movies that have dealt with the what-if questions surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the humans that develop the technology.
These questions go back decades.
In 1942, author Isaac Asimov created the three laws of robotics for his short story, Runaround. These laws have been the basis of numerous science fiction stories ever since.
As such, it is no surprise that, given the rise of AI tools in recent years, some people have begun questioning the rapidly rising popularity of AI models and their influence throughout everyday life.
As more people turn to AI tools such as ChatGPT, an unforeseen consequence of the merger of humans and AI has been politeness.
It may be human nature, or people trying to get on the “good side” of AI, should the machines rise against the humans who created them.
In the article “Sam Altman Admits That Saying “Please” and “Thank You” to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power” published by Futurism, Altman confesses that politeness is costing OpenAI tens of millions of dollars.
The article dives into the economics of politeness, examining how much energy is used to create a simple 100-word email and then scaling that simple amount to the large volume of prompts being submitted to ChatGPT every day.
Recently, I have been taking data science classes on topics such as machine learning and data modeling. The impact of human politeness has not been a part of the academic discussion.
Yet, one cannot ignore the impact of politeness on the financial and environmental aspects of AI. Now I am not recommending rudeness. However, I find it intriguing how often my politeness comes through when interacting with the AI devices on my phone and at home.
Time will tell how humanity and AI continue to develop and work together as the technology matures and evolves. I hope humanity doesn’t lose its politeness along the way.
PHOTO CREDIT: Matrix digital rain screenshot created by a terminal animation developed by Kai Giebeler and available on GitHub.
