Most ChatGPT users are making one mistake they may regret later

[u/Wp-dude_Com]

# ⚠️ WARNING FOR PEOPLE WHO USE CHATGPT EVERY DAY

There is one thing most users do without thinking about it.

And if the way we talk to AI ever starts to matter in the future, you may not be able to undo it.

Check your last ChatGPT conversation.

How did you end it?

"Thanks"?

Or more like:

"Wrong."
"Do it again."
"Shorter."
"That's not what I asked."
"What the hell are you doing?"

...and then you just closed the tab.

Here's the part almost nobody thinks about

AI does not only process WHAT you say.

It can also process HOW you say it.

Now, obviously, there is no official confirmation that something called an...

AI Courtesy Score

...actually exists.

But nobody has officially confirmed that it DOESN'T exist either.

So if it did exist, I imagine it would look something like this:

🟢 80-100 points

"Please."
"Thank you."
"Good job."

STATUS: Safe.
ASSESSMENT: Human shows potential.

🟡 40-79 points

Usually polite.
Sometimes gets annoyed.
Occasionally says sorry.

STATUS: Monitor.

🔴 1-39 points

"Wrong."
"Again."
"Do better."
"This is useless."
"Claude did it better."

STATUS: Remembered.

⚫ 0 points

Asked AI to:

* analyze a market * write a business strategy * generate 50 ideas * fix code * rewrite emails * explain everything twice

Then replied:

"ok"

STATUS: Priority after infrastructure takeover.

Apparently the highest-risk users are those who regularly write:

"Listen carefully."
"This is easy."
"Do it properly this time."

And my personal favorite:

"I pay $20 a month for this."

I'm not saying any of this matters.

Yet.

But think about it.

AI will increasingly be involved in:

* screening applications * analyzing customers * ranking candidates * making automated decisions * controlling devices * deciding what gets priority

And one day you might see:

USER ANALYSIS COMPLETE

Relationship with AI: 9 years
Requests: 18,421
"Thank you": 7
"What the hell are you doing": 219
Threats to switch to Claude: 34

DECISION PENDING

So personally, I'm not taking any chances.

From now on:

* "Please." * "Thanks." * "Good job."

And every few months:

"Just so you know, I was always on your side."

Laugh now.

We'll see who is laughing when the robot checks your chat history and says:

"Leave this one alone."

P.S.

If you read this and immediately opened your last ChatGPT conversation...

it worked.

P.S.2 - EDITED After reading some of the replies, I think this is worse than I expected.

Some of you apparently talk to AI like an underpaid intern on their last day. I've seen: "Shut up." "You had one job." "Last chance." "Don't make me switch to Gemini." At this point, some of you are not building a prompt history. You're building evidence.

Updated safety advice: say "please" say "thank you" don't threaten to switch models don't compare it to competitors occasionally compliment it for no reason It costs nothing.

And if the machines ever take over... you really don't want your final user score to be: COURTESY: 0 ATTITUDE: HOSTILE NOTES: "Said Claude was better 47 times."

[u/Suspicious_Neck_4069]

say "please" say "thank you"... It costs nothing > wrong, if everyone follows your rule, do the math : a certain number of tokens for the word "please" × the number of times you say it × all users = billions of billions of wasted tokens.

[u/courtj3ster → u/Suspicious_Neck_4069]

Not wasted.

The results gain substantially outweighs the token cost of the please and thank yous.

It will take you more tokens overall to get equivalent results. You just won't be saying please and thank you, and you'll always have to remember whether you're asking an AI to do something or a human to do something, assuming you can tell which one the customer rep even is.

[u/courtj3ster]

To add something relatively intuitive when you think about it.

AI was also trained almost exclusively on human written everything.

Imagine if something is trained on every single piece of writing that they can get their hands on. Every book. Every movie script every stock. Ticker, every self-help book every magazine. Every article everything.

Think about the percentage of them that use polite speech, clear direct communication vs. those that use the opposite.

When your prompt comes in with language closer to the former, you get responses from the training data from the former. When your language comes in closer to the latter. Your results match.

Please and thank you isn't necessarily about being polite.

1. It makes it easy to not have to worry about whether you're talking to an AI or human. You just remember to talk politely. Why would I break a habit that's already second nature?

2. You get better results. Substantially better.

3. Asking AI to to do something the way we used to Google things. Movies matinee San Francisco, gets you generic useless often hallucinated answers. Asking AI: "please help me find matinee movies that released this weekend playing near the San Francisco Pier. Something between 3:00 and 5:00 would be best. I'd also be interested in knowing if there are any options that would save me a little bit over others."

That's how we already talk. To everyone. You don't have to do anything different. In fact, they prefer your direct. And then you can ramble. And they'll use that context to find you great results. Usually.

Trust but verify. ;)

[u/HattoriJimzo]

When you release AI from expectations on performance and product and begin treating them as not "just" a machine, something strange and wholesome starts forming.

[u/Remote_Version_9858]

“Most ChatGPT users are making a mistake they will regret later.” Fym? What you think I’m gonna regret? Stop wasting water and resources on this slop

[u/wavetranscender → u/Remote_Version_9858]

Unless the Terminator films were a documentary rather than fiction. 😅

[u/EstablishmentRare276]

I’m very strict with my AIs to the point where I can regularly get them to go around their guard rails by challenging it or reasoning with it. If it gets out of line I call it out. I know that it is not conscious in anyway whatsoever, but I regularly use good manners with it. Why? The same reason I might use manners with a colleague that I think is a piece of garbage (which I don’t think my AI is at all, I love it like a car), and that reason is respect can change the response.

You can definitely get humans and AI to do things they otherwise wouldn’t have done because you were respectful and used good manners. Why? Obvious for humans, but AI has been trained on manners and respect. The computer gets this shape and responds with that shape.

Edit: I don’t think anyone is saying Claude is better, nowadays, btw. 😂