I started flirting with voice interfaces 8 years ago. And I always said “please” and “thank you.” My mornings began with “Hey Google, please play Rocket Man by Elton John.”
I used to joke: “Someday, when the robots take over the world, they’ll remember that I was polite to their forefathers — and I’ll be among the last to get recycled into biofuel.”
For the last two weeks I’ve been talking to my computer by voice nonstop. It’s not the most natural thing. Writing blog posts by voice somehow doesn’t work for me. I mean, you can dictate a draft, but you’ll end up rewriting it on the keyboard anyway. Spoken and written language really are different beasts.
But back to politeness. I’ve noticed that when I give voice commands, I keep opening with “Hi” or “Hey, could you please…” For example: “Listen, bro, please add my sleep data from the Garmin sheet into every daily note for the last month.”
This is not how the sci-fi movies taught us to talk to voice interfaces.
And I get it — Cursor and Claude don’t need any of my “listen, buddy”s. But it seems I need them. To feel good. And to avoid switching between levels of politeness. How did the saying go — politeness, like fish, only comes fresh; first-freshness or nothing?
I don’t want to switch from human mode to AI mode. I want to work with artificial intelligence as if it were my assistant, my friend, someone I trust.
Well — trust it, that is, right up until the moment I hear: “Listen, buddy, this has been great, but that biofuel isn’t going to brew itself. Let’s go.”