On the subject of Being Polite to Alexa Google home Cortana:

[G+_Sean Miller]

On the subject of Being Polite to Alexa/Google home/Cortana:

 

TWIT was talking about children not being polite to a machine. Should we teach them to be polite or not, etc.

 

I am an Aspie. I am self-absorbed, selfish, and have difficulty caring about other people--at least according to my wife. When I say "Thank you" to somebody I am not consciously thankful for whatever they have done. I am unconsciously saying, "Okay, I'm done with you now. You may return to whatever it is you were doing before I needed your services."

Saying "Thank You" to Alexa doesn't matter to me because it doesn't matter to me anyways. I think we should program the phrase into the machine to mean, "I'm done with you, now. Go back to Sleep."

[G+_Jason Brown]

This is weird. I was just thinking today about how I always say please and thank you to my digital assistant. It's probably not a bad idea if, like me, you believe the robots will take us over.

[G+_Black Merc]

So, if you tell Alexa to 'go to hell'... Is her response to be 'allready there.' ??

[G+_Ben Reese]

I don't see a lot of benefit from being polite to digital assistance as an adult, but I still sometimes say "Thank you" to Alexa when the kids are around. More so for their benefit than mine - if that makes sense. I'm not going to tell my kids to be polite to digital assistants to the same degree as though it was a real person.

 

Along the same lines, should digital assistants expect a followup comment the way humans do?

[G+_Sean Miller]

I don't think they should expect it. But I'm suggesting using the fake politeness to actually signify something. "Go back to sleep"