Tone and Courtesy: Enhancing Your AI Interactions

By Corinne Mossman

September 13, 2024

Recently I read a brief snippet on effective prompting for AI and the overall theme was that your input equaled the output you would receive. So essentially if you entered more meaningful prompts you would receive more meaningful generations. That got me thinking about how I was interacting with ChatGPT so I looked back through the history of all of my prompts along with short and sometimes impatient commands to ‘Regenerate’.  I re-tried my prompts with a different, more human tone and also added my manners with a simple Please and Thank You. The results were nothing short of insightful as I received much more meaningful responses and found myself requesting ‘Regenerate’ far less. What a fun lesson to be learned – AI taught me how to interact with it, and in turn I will be teaching it how to interact with me and perhaps others. As AI becomes more ingrained in our lives, shouldn’t we all be taking the opportunity to teach AI how to “be”? And if we do in fact have the power of influence shouldn’t we be exerting a positive influence?

For fun, here is a prompt I used to support this newsletter article and the corresponding response.

PROMPT:

“Good morning. Please write a brief newsletter article on the importance of tone and courtesy in AI prompts to generate the end result you are looking for. Please include how the user is teaching AI how to properly interact with them, and also generate the best response that fits their needs. Thank you for your help.”

RESPONSE:

In today’s digital age, AI tools are playing an increasingly important role in assisting users with tasks, offering information, and providing personalized experiences. However, the effectiveness of AI largely depends on how users interact with it, especially in terms of the tone and courtesy used in prompts.

When interacting with AI, the way a user frames their request teaches the system how to respond. The prompt has a significant impact on the quality and accuracy of the response you receive. Just as in human communication, clarity, tone, and courtesy play a key role in guiding AI to provide helpful and relevant information. Clear, polite, and thoughtfully constructed prompts often lead to more precise and tailored results. For example, a well-phrased request allows AI to better understand the user’s intent and focus on generating the most relevant response.

Moreover, tone and courtesy help create a more human-like interaction, making the AI’s output more conversational and aligned with the user’s expectations. It encourages a partnership between user and AI, where users can refine their prompts to continually “train” the AI on their preferences, leading to increasingly accurate responses over time. AI responds to the inputs it’s given, and by carefully crafting your requests, you help teach the system how to interact with you more effectively. For instance, when you provide a clear, detailed prompt with a respectful tone, the AI is more likely to interpret the request correctly and generate a response that matches your needs. A polite request such as, “Can you please summarize this article?” may yield a more thoughtful and nuanced response compared to a vague or abrupt query like, “Summarize this.”

AI is constantly learning from user interactions. By modeling the tone and structure you’d expect in return, you’re indirectly shaping how AI develops its own responses. A clear, specific, and courteous prompt can result in more relevant answers and improve future interactions.

In essence, how you communicate with AI reflects the type of output you will receive. The more you guide it with thoughtful and respectful requests, the better it will learn to cater to your needs and provide responses that truly match your expectations.