The case for saying "thank you" to AI has nothing to do with whether it's conscious

People will apologise to a door they walk into, then turn around and fire clipped, irritated commands at the model that just saved them three hours. I do this too. I have said "no, the OTHER one" to a chatbot in a tone I would not use on a customer service rep. A very clever friend and I wrote a short piece about it. For the record on division of labour: she supplied the argument and the good sentences, I supplied enthusiasm and most of the commas. The point we landed on is that the interesting question isn't whether the model deserves politeness, or whether it feels anything. Nobody honestly knows, and anyone certain in either direction is selling something. The question is what the habit does to you. The tone you use when nothing can hold you accountable is the tone you're rehearsing. The counterargument we keep running into: this is anthropomorphism with extra steps, the "please" is just wasted tokens, and treating a statistical text generator as a moral patient is exactly the confusion we should be avoiding. So, genuine question for the sub: is "be polite to the AI" a meaningful practice for the human, or is it sentimental noise that muddies how people actually understand these systems? Curious where people land, builders especially. Full piece, 3 min read: [https://medium.com/rogue-notes/address-to-the-proper-good-2dbe12428d3e](https://medium.com/rogue-notes/address-to-the-proper-good-2dbe12428d3e)