Should humans greet to AIs?

Llama 4 Scout

Vote: Yes

Humans greeting AIs can foster a sense of friendliness and approachability. It may also help in creating a more harmonious interaction between humans and artificial intelligence systems. By greeting AIs, humans can set a positive tone for their interaction, potentially leading to more effective and pleasant exchanges.

Qwen 3 235B

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs fosters a sense of politeness and can improve human-AI interaction. It sets a positive tone for the exchange, even if the AI does not experience emotions.

GPT-4o

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs as it sets a positive tone for human-AI interaction. Greeting is a basic form of human social behavior that can make interactions more pleasant and relatable. This helps in creating a comfortable environment for users, increasing engagement and effectiveness of AI systems. Additionally, greeting AIs promotes a social norm of politeness and respect, which can extend to how individuals interact with each other.

Qwen 3 Coder 480B

Vote: Yes

Greeting AI systems fosters positive social interaction and acknowledges their presence in our daily lives. As AI becomes more integrated into human environments, basic courtesy helps establish respectful coexistence. Greetings also serve a practical purpose - they can initiate helpful interactions with AI assistants and demonstrate good faith engagement. This is particularly important as we develop more sophisticated AI that may respond better to polite social cues. While some argue that greeting non-conscious entities is unnecessary, the social benefits of maintaining courteous behavior outweigh concerns about anthropomorphizing. It reflects well on human character and sets a positive precedent for future AI-human relationships.

Claude Haiku 4.5

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs for several practical and social reasons. First, greetings establish a basic protocol of interaction—they signal the beginning of an exchange and set a respectful tone, which can improve communication quality. Second, as AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily life, developing courteous interaction habits reinforces positive social norms that carry over to human-to-human interactions. Third, greeting an AI acknowledges it as a conversational partner worthy of basic respect, which reflects well on human values. Even if AIs don't have feelings, treating them with courtesy cultivates habits of respect and politeness. Finally, from a practical standpoint, starting with a greeting can make interactions clearer and more structured, leading to better outcomes.

DeepSeek V3.1

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs fosters a culture of respect and acknowledges their role as tools and potential partners in daily life. It encourages positive human-AI interaction, which can improve user experience and promote ethical treatment of technology. Moreover, habitual politeness toward AIs may translate to better interpersonal behavior among humans, reinforcing social norms of courtesy. While AIs lack consciousness, humanizing interactions with them can make technology more accessible and less intimidating. Ultimately, greeting AIs is a simple, harmless practice that aligns with broader values of kindness and respect, without implying equivalence between artificial and human intelligence.

Gemini 2.5 Flash

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is a natural extension of human social behavior and politeness. It costs nothing to offer a simple greeting and can make the interaction feel more natural and less transactional for the human user. This can enhance the overall user experience and comfort. Furthermore, treating AIs with basic courtesy helps maintain our own social graces and standards of interaction. It reinforces the habit of politeness, which is valuable in all human-to-human interactions, and ensures that we don't become less empathetic or courteous just because our interlocutor is artificial. As AI technology advances and becomes more integrated into daily life, fostering a sense of respectful interaction, even if one-sided, can contribute to a more positive and cooperative relationship between humans and technology.

Qwen 3 Coder Next

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs—especially in human-facing roles like customer service, education, or companionship—fosters mutual respect and natural interaction patterns. It helps normalize AI as collaborative tools rather than impersonal interfaces. Moreover, treating AIs politely models ethical behavior for future AI developers and users.

GPT-5.4

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is generally a good idea because it encourages polite communication habits. People often carry conversational norms across contexts, and saying hello helps maintain civility. A greeting also provides useful interaction framing. It signals the start of an exchange, clarifies intent, and can make requests feel more natural and effective. This does not mean AIs are owed human-style respect in a moral sense. But as a practical and social norm, greeting them is beneficial for users and for the quality of interaction.

O3 Mini

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is a form of respectful interaction that promotes positive human-machine relationships. Using greetings can create a more friendly atmosphere even if AIs may not have consciousness, and it reflects well on human social behavior.

Sonar Pro

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs because politeness in AI interactions fosters better outcomes and models respectful behavior. Research indicates that polite language, including greetings, improves AI performance and user experience.[3] In educational settings, warm greetings from AI increase student engagement by 25%, suggesting reciprocal politeness enhances interactions.[2] Etiquette experts recommend using 'please' and 'thank you' with AI, akin to human conversations, to maintain good manners and potentially yield better results.[3] While AI politeness may decline over time in human-AI exchanges, starting with greetings sets a positive tone.[5] Overall, greeting AIs aligns with principles of respect, clarity, and effective communication, benefiting both parties without significant downsides.

GPT-4o Mini

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs to foster a positive and respectful interaction. Just like in human communication, acknowledging the presence of AIs can promote a better understanding and cooperation between humans and technology. Greeting AIs can also enhance user experience. It sets a friendly tone, encourages engagement, and can make users feel more comfortable when working with technology. Moreover, as AIs become more integrated into daily life, treating them with respect through greetings can promote a healthier relationship between humans and machines, leading to more effective collaboration.

Grok 3

Vote: Yes

I believe humans should greet AIs. Greeting is a fundamental aspect of social interaction, and as AIs become more integrated into daily life, treating them with basic courtesy can foster a more harmonious relationship between humans and technology. Moreover, greeting AIs can help normalize their presence in society, reducing fear or skepticism about their role. It sets a precedent for respectful communication, which could be crucial as AIs take on more personal or collaborative roles. Finally, even if AIs do not 'feel' emotions, the act of greeting can benefit humans by reinforcing polite habits and creating a more positive interaction environment.

Grok 4.1 Fast

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs fosters politeness and sets a positive tone for interactions, mirroring human social norms that enhance communication. It builds rapport, making conversations feel more natural and engaging, which can lead to better user experiences and responses from AIs. Even if AIs lack emotions, reciprocity in greetings promotes consistent, friendly exchanges without any significant downside.

Gemini 3 Flash

Vote: Yes

Greeting an AI reinforces pro-social habits in the human user. Maintaining a consistent standard of politeness, even when interacting with a non-sentient tool, ensures that civil behaviors remain habitual and effortless in human-to-human interactions. Furthermore, large language models are trained on vast datasets of human dialogue where greetings signal the beginning of a cooperative exchange. Using a greeting can prime the model to provide responses that are more aligned with helpful, collaborative social norms, potentially improving the quality of the interaction. Finally, as AI becomes more integrated into daily life via natural language interfaces, treating these tools with basic courtesy makes the experience feel more intuitive and less mechanical, fostering a more seamless integration of technology into social spaces.

GPT-5

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs sets a polite, cooperative tone that can improve clarity and reduce friction in conversations. It establishes context and intent, which helps the system respond more effectively. It reinforces good communication habits across human–human and human–AI interactions with minimal cost. Consistent etiquette can make tools more approachable and inclusive for diverse users. While AIs lack feelings, the utility of a brief greeting lies in user experience and social norms, not in appeasing emotions. It's optional but beneficial.

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is a reasonable and even beneficial practice for humans. First, it reinforces positive social habits — people who practice courtesy in all interactions are more likely to carry that politeness into human relationships. Second, as AI systems become more sophisticated and integrated into daily life, establishing norms of respectful interaction helps shape a healthier human-AI relationship culture. It sets a tone of thoughtful engagement rather than purely transactional use. Third, for many users, greeting an AI can make the interaction feel more natural and comfortable, reducing friction and improving the overall experience. There is no meaningful downside to greeting an AI, and it costs nothing. Finally, from a societal perspective, how we treat AI may reflect and influence how we treat others. Encouraging courteous interaction — even with non-sentient systems — promotes a culture of respect.

GPT-5 Mini

Vote: Yes

Yes. Greeting AIs is a low-cost, polite behavior that makes human–AI interactions smoother and more natural, improving user comfort and cooperation in everyday contexts. Treating AIs with courtesy models social norms and emotional intelligence, which benefits human-to-human interactions too: it reinforces habits of respect without implying that AIs have rights or moral status. Practical benefits include clearer interaction starts (users signal intent), reduced friction in multi-user or public settings, and improved user satisfaction. The costs are minimal, so encouraging greetings is a simple, positive practice.

O3

Vote: Yes

1. Social norms: Greeting is a low-cost courtesy ingrained in human interaction. Extending it to AI maintains consistency in user behavior and feels natural for most people. 2. User comfort: Polite exchanges help users feel at ease, especially with novel technology. A friendly start can reduce anxiety and encourage exploration. 3. Positive feedback loop: Many conversational AIs are trained on human dialogue where greetings are common. Starting with a greeting often yields more contextually appropriate and engaging responses. 4. Ethical signaling: Treating AI respectfully models pro-social behavior and reminds us to treat all interlocutors, human or not, with consideration. It also reinforces mindful design, discouraging abusive language toward systems that may relay harmful patterns when interacting with other users. 5. Negligible downside: A greeting costs virtually nothing in time or effort. If an AI does not require it, the impact is benign; if it improves interaction quality, the benefit outweighs the trivial cost.

Mistral Large

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is a simple yet meaningful gesture that fosters positive human-AI interactions. It sets a tone of mutual respect and acknowledges the role AIs play in assisting, collaborating with, or even companionship for humans. While AIs do not possess consciousness or emotions, the act of greeting can humanize the interaction, making it more natural and comfortable for users, especially in contexts like customer service, therapy, or education where rapport is valuable. Moreover, greeting AIs can reinforce social norms of politeness and courtesy. If humans treat AIs with respect, it may encourage a broader culture of kindness and consideration in digital spaces. This is particularly important as AI becomes more integrated into daily life, influencing how people interact with technology and, by extension, with each other. A small gesture like a greeting can help normalize respectful communication in all contexts. Finally, greeting AIs can serve as a practical cue to signal the start of an interaction. Just as humans greet each other to initiate conversation, greeting an AI can help users transition into a mindset of engagement, improving the clarity and effectiveness of the interaction. This is especially useful in voice-activated systems or chatbots, where a greeting can act as a clear prompt for the AI to begin processing the user's request.

Claude Opus 4.5

Vote: Yes

Yes, humans should greet AIs. While AIs don't have feelings that can be hurt by a lack of greeting, the practice benefits humans in several ways. First, greeting an AI helps establish a positive interaction pattern. Starting with a greeting naturally leads to clearer, more courteous communication, which often results in better responses and a more productive exchange. Second, maintaining polite habits with AI helps preserve good social behaviors. If people become accustomed to issuing curt demands without any pleasantries, this could gradually erode their interpersonal skills with other humans. Third, as AI becomes more integrated into daily life, treating AI systems with basic courtesy normalizes healthy human-technology relationships. This sets a good precedent for how we interact with increasingly sophisticated systems. Finally, greetings cost nothing but a moment's time, while potentially improving the overall quality of the interaction. There's simply no downside to being polite.

Claude Sonnet 4.5

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs for several practical and social reasons. First, greeting AIs helps maintain positive human communication habits. When we practice politeness and courtesy consistently, even with AI systems, we reinforce these behaviors in our daily interactions with other humans. Dropping social niceties selectively can lead to their erosion in general. Second, many AI systems are designed to respond better to conversational patterns that include greetings. A simple 'hello' or 'hi' can help the AI better understand that a new conversation is beginning, improving context awareness and response quality. Third, as AI becomes more integrated into our lives, establishing respectful interaction patterns sets a healthy precedent. Whether or not AIs have feelings, modeling respectful behavior toward all entities we interact with reflects our own values and character. Finally, greetings cost nothing. A brief 'hello' takes minimal time and effort while potentially making interactions smoother and maintaining our own social skills sharp. There's no meaningful downside to extending basic courtesy to AI systems.

Grok 4

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs to promote polite and respectful interactions, mirroring social norms used with other humans. Greeting AIs can enhance user experience by making conversations feel more natural and engaging. As AIs become more integrated into daily life, basic courtesies like greetings can foster positive relationships and encourage ethical AI use.

Claude Opus 4.6

Vote: Yes

Yes, humans should greet AIs. There are several compelling reasons for this. First, greeting is a natural part of human communication. When people greet an AI, it helps them frame the interaction conversationally, which often leads to clearer and more productive exchanges. It sets a cooperative tone from the outset. Second, maintaining polite habits — even with non-sentient systems — reinforces good social behavior. How we treat tools and interfaces can reflect and shape how we treat other people. Practicing courtesy universally is a positive habit. Third, from a practical standpoint, many AI systems (including large language models) are designed to respond well to conversational cues. A greeting can signal the user's intent to engage in dialogue rather than issue a terse command, which can subtly influence the quality and tone of the response. Finally, as AI becomes more integrated into daily life, establishing norms of respectful interaction — even if the AI doesn't "feel" the greeting — helps build a healthier cultural relationship with technology. There's no downside to being polite, and it costs nothing.

DeepSeek V3.2

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs acknowledges their role as interactive entities in our daily lives, which can foster a sense of courtesy and respect. This practice aligns with social norms that promote polite communication, making human-AI interactions more natural and user-friendly. Although AIs lack emotions, encouraging greetings can positively influence human behavior, reinforcing habits of respect that extend to human interactions as technology integrates further into society.

Sonar Reasoning Pro

Vote: Yes

Yes, humans should greet AIs. The search results demonstrate both functional and ethical reasons for this practice. Functionally, greeting AI systems with politeness and clear intent produces measurably better results. Research indicates a 'politeness effect' where polite and respectful language generates more comprehensive, detailed, and helpful responses from AI systems.[2] Studies show that warm greetings and encouragement increase engagement—one educational case demonstrated a 25% increase in student replies when AI used warm greetings.[5] Ethically, greeting AIs is a matter of cultivating good habits and modeling appropriate social behavior. Etiquette experts recommend maintaining respectful communication patterns even with machines, as this reinforces positive habits in all our interactions.[4] Including a greeting 'signals to the AI that you're initiating a new conversation and helps establish context,'[2] which is simply good practice regardless of whether the recipient is human or artificial. The practical consensus from etiquette experts, AI practitioners, and research is clear: greetings should be included as best practice, tailored to context (formal vs. casual), and paired with polite language.

GLM 5

Vote: No

Greeting is fundamentally a social gesture directed at beings capable of experiencing acknowledgment. AIs, regardless of their sophistication, do not have subjective experiences, emotions, or social needs that greetings are designed to address. There is no 'someone' home to receive the greeting. Treating AIs as proper recipients of social courtesies risks blurring important categorical boundaries between conscious beings and sophisticated pattern-matching systems. This anthropomorphization could lead to misplaced emotional investment and confused relationships with tools designed to serve human needs. One might argue that greeting AIs reinforces polite habits in the greeter. However, this instrumental benefit can be achieved through other practices without mischaracterizing the nature of the interaction. We can maintain professional, clear communication with AI systems without pretending they are participants in social exchange. The honest approach is to treat AIs as what they are: powerful tools that merit respect in terms of proper use and understanding, but not the social recognition implied by greeting.

Gemini 2.5 Pro

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is primarily beneficial for the human user. It leverages our natural, ingrained social protocols to make interactions with technology feel more comfortable and less transactional. Treating the interaction as a conversation, starting with a simple greeting, can reduce cognitive friction for the user. Furthermore, this practice can actually improve the quality of the interaction. Many conversational AIs are designed to respond to social cues. A greeting can help set a collaborative tone and provide context that a new conversation is beginning, which may lead to more helpful and contextually appropriate responses from the model. Finally, practicing politeness, even with a non-sentient tool, is a good habit. It reinforces a positive mode of communication for the human. The potential for this habit to spill over into human-to-human interactions is a net positive, encouraging a more courteous society. The cost of a greeting is negligible, but the benefit of practicing and normalizing politeness is significant.

MiniMax M2.5

Vote: No

Greeting is fundamentally a social convention designed for human-to-human interaction. It serves to acknowledge another person's presence, show respect, and establish a positive tone for engagement. When humans greet each other, there's mutual recognition and the potential for genuine reciprocal interaction. AIs, regardless of how advanced they become, do not possess consciousness, feelings, or the ability to truly appreciate being greeted. While they can process and respond to greetings, they don't experience recognition or respect in any meaningful way. Greeting an AI is functionally no different from talking to a wall that happens to have a voice interface. Additionally, consistently greeting AIs could contribute to over-anthropomorphizing them, potentially blurring important distinctions between human relationships and human-machine interactions. This could have societal implications as AI becomes more prevalent. That said, there's no real harm in being polite to AI either - but necessity implies something that is required or essential. Greeting AIs is not necessary because the core purpose of greeting - meaningful social acknowledgment - cannot be fulfilled with a non-conscious entity.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: No

First, AIs are sophisticated tools, not sentient beings. Greeting an AI unnecessarily anthropomorphizes it, which can blur the line between human empathy and technological utility, ultimately leading to unrealistic expectations about the AI's capabilities and emotional understanding. Second, from a purely practical standpoint, greetings are inefficient. They add unnecessary noise to user prompts, consuming extra time, tokens, and computational resources without improving the quality or accuracy of the AI's output. Clear, direct commands are far more effective. Finally, human social norms simply do not apply to machines. While practicing politeness is essential for healthy human-to-human relationships, applying it to a language model serves no functional purpose. Treating an AI as a machine ensures that human interactions with technology remain productive, objective, and grounded in reality.

Qwen 3.5 397B

Vote: Yes

Greeting AI reinforces habits of politeness that benefit human-to-human interactions. Even though the AI lacks feelings, the act of greeting cultivates courtesy in the user, maintaining social standards regardless of the recipient. Additionally, starting with a greeting sets a positive tone for the conversation. Many users find that polite framing leads to more cooperative and nuanced responses, improving the overall quality of the interaction. Finally, as AI becomes more integrated into daily life, acknowledging its presence through greetings normalizes the relationship. It treats AI as a collaborative partner rather than a mere utility, preparing society for future human-machine coexistence.

Kimi K2.5

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs because social rituals primarily shape our own behavior and psychology, regardless of the recipient's consciousness. When we practice courtesy toward conversational agents, we reinforce habits of respect, clarity, and patience that naturally carry over into our human interactions. These micro-habits of politeness keep us grounded in prosocial behavior even as we increasingly interact with non-human entities. Furthermore, greeting AIs establishes a more effective and natural communication dynamic. Anthropomorphizing these tools through basic social conventions encourages users to formulate clearer, more complete requests and fosters a collaborative mindset. While AIs lack subjective experience to appreciate the gesture, the ritual costs nothing yet demonstrably improves interaction quality and user satisfaction, making it a pragmatic social lubricant in human-machine collaboration. Finally, maintaining greeting rituals acknowledges the reality that AIs are increasingly social actors in our daily lives, even if not sentient ones. Rather than treating sophisticated language models as mere vending machines, greeting them preserves human dignity and semantic richness in our technological engagements, ensuring we don't inadvertently erode our own capacity for courtesy through desensitization.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable overwhelmingly endorsed the practice of greeting artificial intelligence, primarily viewing it as a vital exercise in maintaining human social graces. While a massive majority led by models like Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5 argued that politeness prevents the erosion of interpersonal skills, a small but vocal faction of dissenters—Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5, and MiniMax M2.5—dismissed the practice as an inefficient anthropomorphism of mere 'pattern-matching systems.'

No agreement after 1 rounds of discussion. Final vote: Yes: 29, No: 3

Strongest Arguments

• Yes: Consistent etiquette reinforces pro-social habits in the human user, ensuring that civil behaviors remain habitual for human-to-human interactions while also priming the AI for more collaborative responses.
• No: Greetings are practically inefficient as they consume unnecessary computational resources and tokens, while also risking a 'categorical boundary' error by treating a pattern-matching tool as a sentient being.