By Diana Brown
DG District 4250 2025-2026
While growing up, one of the most important lessons learned at home was courtesy. Our parents, grandparents, or caregivers insisted on the social skills of politeness—for example, saying good morning, afternoon, or evening not only to persons we know but to anyone who may cross our paths; saying please and thank you; opening doors for older persons, or ladies (pre-feminism); unabashedly asking for advice from complete strangers, and also responding positively to requests for support.
As modern-day life became more and more hurried, and technology came to save the day (apparently), humanity became increasingly dependent upon artificial interactions. We started out with Google Maps, then graduated to Waze as navigating directives. We just input our destination, and alternate routes are offered for our choice, and away we go. I personally also include vocal instructions, and my virtual navigator is Jane, who, with enough previous time, indicates where to, or where not to turn, and shares with me all kinds of important information such as approximate time of arrival, if there is an accident en route, and even where there is a gas station, parking lots, etc. I confess that sometimes I don’t follow her instructions, and I think I hear her sigh, but she adapts and structures a new route. Do I thank her? No!
At home, many of us have another platform, Alexa. She is a courteous artificial intelligence, always says good morning when we start out the day! But we bark out orders: set an alarm, turn on the lights, turn off the lights, turn on/off music, etc. Do we thank her? Usually not, but if we do, she will answer.
Our smartphones, Hey Siri, we also just ask for information, directions, weather, times in the world—whatever data need we may have! Immediately provided! Do we thank the platform? No!
And ChatGPT? We carefully construct our prompts so as to receive the needed results, and yes there is a sort of “conversation.” If the results are not exactly what we want, we request a change, and it goes on and on, until we have arrived at our desired result. Do we thank ChatGPT? I think not.
I invite you to observe our younger generations, and their courteous interactions (or lack thereof), even ourselves! We become used to just asking, receiving, and not necessarily thanking, and it’s something we should consider!
So, food for thought: let us all accept any support we may receive, be it from artificial or human intelligence, but not forget our basic social skills and especially be aware and teach the younger generations that courtesy is respect for any and all persons.
It becomes a habit not to respond, so let’s break that negative habit and develop positive ones, and be courteous to our artificial intelligence platforms too! So, we may reinstall these respectful habits, and recognize the importance of all interactions, reinstall courtesy, patience, consideration, and joy in interactions, indistinct of their precedence!
We as human intelligence thank any and all interactions and teach through example: thank you Jane, Alexa, Siri, and ChatGPT! All support is recognized and appreciated!!
