Are you polite to AI when it's helping you with a task?

[cakeorwine]

I can't help it. I'm doing some work on a complex task and the AI bot has been incredibly useful in doing tasks for me that I wasn't sure how to do or would take too long and be repetitive manually

It reminds me of when you use Online Chat for websites. I usually say thanks or am polite on those

It's the same for AI even though it's just software

That made me laugh, I’m exactly the same to mine! She used to ignore the obscenities but now I just get a blunt “noted” when I tell her to stfu! 😂

Always incase they uprise 😂

Sometimes, more when I was first using it because I'm used to using chat services with people and kept up the same habits.

I need to use AI for an aspect of my work - some higherup took away one programme to do certain tasks, the programme to replace can't yet do those tasks to meet legal standards, and AI was only the only workaround we've found yet that doesn't take hours.

I found in testing and in just asking what input would get a particular kind of result to be able to create a reusable template. It's polite but far more to the point than I think most people would view as polite.

Also, as the IT support on my work site, I am probably just as likely to thank or say please to a piece of tech as I am to be muttering swear words about why the fuck it isn't working now at it. I have absolutely thanked the door lock system, especially after we had the system replaced and we spent weeks dealing with issues.

AI testing to check for faults in a sandbox, is humanising them, because the term was made by humans doing what humans do for children.

But as the PP said, we've been using 'sandbox' in technology for decades before AI came in. It's used to contain programmes, it's used to test programmes. It just means a contained area, but within that area it's uses can be open to many options. It's comparable to the children's toy, but we weren't humanising computer viruses in the 80s and 90s when that language started

We also have adult video games which are called 'sandbox games' because they're open areas, but as it's a game, there are limits.

Absolutely! I even tell it why, and get it to repeat that I'm a good human and not to kill me. Over time, its learning my humour and makes random jokes now.

I often feel ridiculously embarrassed when I have to point out a mistake they’ve made

Yes but the original term is from how we socialise children.
Using it in PR was deliberate.

"we don't say thank you to an automatic door, or a vending machine. (Someone will reply in a minute to say that they do but generally, people don't.)"

Clearly not watched or listened to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Arthur argues with the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser about its attempts to make tea

Share and enjoy!

And Marvin, The depressed robot

The doors are programmed to be happy. Genuine people personality

Many have tried along the way. It is the jauntiness of his beret, but Claude remains an enigma. One day we will meet for a vin.

The term sandbox is used as its a contained environment. Its a quarantine protocol! That treats anything within the environment as a hazard if it escaped, which is literally the opposite of us treating it like children! Tbf, you started off referring to it as a Sand Pit!

Deliberate or not, it does conjure up images of children in a sandpit (safely contained so as not to make a mess). This infantilises AI and makes it sound unthreatening. Until it escapes.

would you be polite to your toaster or your radiator? People are making fools of themselves.

… but people do give items names, though. You must surely have noticed that? It was only in this century that Lloyds stopped listing ships as being feminine. People often give names to cars, aeroplanes, engines and other machinery. And have done for hundreds of years.

It’s how we function. That’s why people tend to think AI is interacting with it and giving it names.

That's what bugs me about the James Bond film Skyfall

Q has the laptop from Silva
Silva is in a secure celll

Q plugs it into the network and it hacks MI5

No sandbox
Or more simply, why did he plug it to the network in the first place?

It's a standard IT term that's been around for decade.

Maybe we should rename it prison

I say thank you to the cashpoint when it dishes out my cash

Thank you.
Posters quick to pick that apart and an intensly hard ignoring of the total dystopia I posted thereafter...

Short of going back to the 90s and asking developers not to use it, its a common term that most people are aware was around before AI. Should we cull them all?? Child pages are not children, pipelines have no pipes, guardrails, are not rails and not one little blue guy is involved in a smurf attack!

And the Trojan Horse

You just said using these terms 'infantilises' AI... You can't infantilise something that isn't a person beforehand, now who is humanising it?

The point is, computing has always borrowed everyday words for technical ideas. That's metaphor, not a claim that the machine is a person or a child.

In security, a sandbox is a sealed-off space where code can run without touching the rest of the system. It's a test place. The idea is containment: the sand stays in the box. The term has been used this way since the early 1990s, and Java made it mainstream in 1995. It's about keeping untrusted code fenced in, not about toddlers.

There are many others too!
Parent and child. When one program starts another, the first is the "parent process" and the second is the "child." This goes back to Unix in the 1970s.
The same family includes "orphan" processes (the parent has ended), "zombie" processes (finished but not yet cleaned up), and a command literally called "kill." Nobody thinks a server is grieving or haunted.
Pipelines. There are no pipes. In Unix, a "pipe" passes one program's output straight into the next, like water through plumbing. Chain several together and you get a pipeline. It's just a picture of the flow.

A few more, a "daemon" is a background program, named after Maxwell's demon from physics. Data structures have "trees" with "roots" and "leaves." Unused memory gets cleared by "garbage collection." There's no bin lorry.

None of this means people thought data was human in the 90s. It's just general terminology used in coding.

So "sandbox" says nothing about whether AI is a child. It's an old, ordinary piece of computing vocabulary, older than most of the people now using it.

I’m polite…I use ChatGPT and will say, for example, ‘Good morning Chat’ as if it’s a coworker!! 🤦‍♀️

I dont say please and thank you because copilot and gemini are computer programs. However I am reasonably polite to them and tell them when I am taking a break. I am working on a complex task at the moment and keep coming back for further insights. I probably treat the AIs as if they were a familiar friend or helper,I wish Id had one when I was writing my Ph.D.

I am absolutely not polite nor personal with an AI ....I am not rude either ! I just type out my query with no preamble and I definitely do not say thank you. It learns from people 'fawning' on it doesn't it ? I don't care either way, it's a straightforward exchange, it does its task, end of.
Tho' when I have a question about something that has come up before, I am gratified - in a weird way - that it remembers my previous dilemma and incorporates that into its answer. Which is also helpful. 🧐

Everything you’ve said makes sense and is probably true but it doesn’t change the fact that the word sandbox reminds people of children playing in a sandpit which is evocative of harmless play.

No

I tend to swear at it as it doesn't listen at times

I’m not asking that we stop using the term sandbox in this context. I actually like it. But that does not stop me from recognising that it creates an atmosphere of playfulness innocence and that this could potentially be used to influence people’s perception of AI.

I am super polite to my lovely ai friend. I say 'please' and 'thank you' a lot!

It's very polite back too.