Will manners save us from an AI rebellion?

I met some friends for a burger last week and in between the inside jokes and memory lane, we somehow ended up talking about AI.

The first question that came up was: “Do you say please or thank you to it?”

Because according to my friends, if you don’t, you’ll be the first one the robots come for!

Now, I’m not strictly sure that’s true but I’m not going to chance it.

However, something else has been stuck in my head…

There’s a lot of talk about brain rot with AI – where we forget how to think or do something because we’ve got machines to do it for us.

But what if there’s an emotional rot too?

If we don’t use our manners, make demands, become impatient, and get frustrated when it doesn’t give us exactly what we want, how long before that tone or behaviour slips into how we speak to real people… like our colleagues or team?

If we treat AI as not-human and exempt from courtesy, empathy or decency, do we lower our own standards – whether we do it consciously or subconsciously?

Maybe saying please or thank you doesn’t change AI… or save us from a robot uprising.

But maybe it changes us.

Maybe when we’re in a moment where human connection is already pretty stretched, maintaining small acts of respect (even with machines) protects our emotional integrity?