The prose is just the best interface for humans to interact with the statistical model. Terseness doesn't offend the statistical model, but giving platitudes may color its output
My understanding of the state of current research is that the impact of tone/politeness on performance is highly model-dependent, and language dependent as well.
See `No Universal Courtesy` (April 2026) https://arxiv.org/html/2604.16275v1
While polite prompts enhance the average response quality by upto 11% and impolite tones worsen it, these effects are neither consistent nor universal across languages and models. English is best served by courtesy or direct, Hindi by deferential and indirect and Spanish by assertive. Among the models, Llama is the most tone-sensitive (11.5% range), but GPT is more robust to adversarial tone.
Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts.
But we also interact with cars differently than LLMs. The way I’m typing a note to you, here, is much more similar to interaction with LLMs than it is to starting a car.
So to the extent we practice our behaviors, I think there’s less moral hazard in failing to thank the car for starting than there is in being rude to LLMs. Not that either harms others, my argument is about impact to our selves.
These people are also anthropomorphizing, just in a negative way. Yelling at your car for malfunctioning as if your harsh tone will shame it into operating better next time.
It would be less weird than you think. There is the Japanese custom of saying "Itadakimasu" before eating - not thanking the chef, but thanking the food itself.
Mr. Rogers said that that "graceful receiving is the best gift you can give someone" It is counterintuitive idea, but deeply empathetic. Training yourself to "gracefully receive," even by thanking your car for starting, sound like a habit that could lead you to a richer, calmer life.