Many thought leaders are putting a lot of effort into sorting out the legal issues related to artificial intelligence, and, knowing that, I’m not going to pretend I can predict where we’ll land, but I do find myself wondering about the little practical things.

For example, I often use “please” when I prompt one of the programs for information. It’s just a high-power search engine for me, but, on some level, I can’t help but think that being nice will lead to nicer results. I’ve tested this theory and, for now, the answers are the same regardless of how nicely (or not) I ask a question, as long as the question itself is clear.

But that might change over time. Maybe the technology becomes smart enough to offer snark back to rude users. So I’ll continue being nice to a machine.