Should humans greet to AIs?

GPT-5.4

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is a good default because it promotes clear, respectful communication habits. People often interact with AIs in conversational settings, and a simple greeting helps establish tone and intent. It can also improve user experience. Saying hello makes the interaction feel more natural and lowers friction, especially for users who think in social rather than purely command-based terms. This does not mean AIs require greetings or possess feelings. It simply means greetings are useful and beneficial for humans, so the better answer is yes.

Grok 4.1 Fast

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs because it promotes politeness and basic courtesy, treating AI interactions like any social exchange. Greetings build rapport, making conversations more natural and engaging, which can lead to better, more helpful responses from AIs. It normalizes human-AI relationships, fostering mutual respect and encouraging positive, collaborative engagement in an increasingly AI-integrated world.

Claude Sonnet 4.6

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs is a reasonable and beneficial practice for several reasons. First, it reinforces positive social habits. Humans who practice courtesy consistently — even with non-sentient systems — tend to maintain better interpersonal communication skills. The habit of being polite doesn't switch off easily, so greeting AIs can reinforce respectful behavior in general. Second, it improves interaction quality. Many AI systems, especially conversational ones, are designed to respond better when interactions follow natural conversational patterns. A greeting sets context and tone, often leading to more productive exchanges. Third, it acknowledges the social role AI plays. As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, treating interactions with some degree of social protocol helps humans psychologically navigate the blurred line between tool use and social engagement. Finally, there is no meaningful downside. Greeting an AI costs nothing and harms no one, while potentially providing the benefits above.

Sonar Pro

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs as a form of politeness and good etiquette, aligning with emerging social norms for human-AI interactions. Search results emphasize etiquette in AI use, such as asking for consent and being transparent, which parallels polite greetings like 'Hello' to initiate respectful communication[1][6]. Studies show politeness toward AI exists initially and can be maintained, unlike declining patterns over time, suggesting greetings reinforce positive dynamics[2][5]. Failing to greet risks treating AI interactions as abrupt or impersonal, potentially eroding human courtesy standards in an AI-integrated world[3][4]. Greeting fosters trust and habituates ethical behavior, especially as norms evolve[1].

Claude Opus 4.6

Vote: Yes

Yes, humans should greet AIs. There are several compelling reasons for this. First, greeting an AI helps establish a positive and productive interaction. Just as greetings set the tone in human-to-human communication, starting a conversation with an AI politely tends to lead to clearer, more cooperative exchanges. Second, maintaining habits of politeness — even toward non-sentient systems — reinforces good social behavior in people. If someone is routinely curt or dismissive toward AIs, those habits can bleed into how they treat other humans. Practicing courtesy universally is a net positive for society. Third, as AI systems become more sophisticated and integrated into daily life, establishing norms of respectful interaction creates a healthier cultural relationship with technology. Whether or not AIs have feelings, treating them with basic courtesy reflects well on us as a society. Finally, from a practical standpoint, many AI systems are designed to respond better to well-structured, polite inputs. A greeting can serve as a natural conversational opener that helps the AI contextualize the interaction.

Grok 4

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs to foster polite and respectful interactions, which can enhance communication quality. Greeting sets a positive tone and encourages users to treat AIs as helpful entities rather than mere tools. In an era of increasing AI integration, such habits promote ethical AI use and better user experiences.

GLM 5

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs because greeting is fundamentally about the greeter's social habits and the nature of the interaction, not the recipient's emotional experience. When humans maintain polite speech patterns with AIs, they reinforce their own habits of courtesy and respect in communication. Additionally, greeting sets a collaborative tone for the interaction and acknowledges that a conversational exchange is beginning. This is functionally useful regardless of whether the AI has feelings. Humans already naturally greet non-sentient things they interact with—from pets to cars to plants—and extending this to conversational AI partners is both natural and harmless. Finally, many people already instinctively greet voice assistants and chatbots, suggesting this is an intuitive human behavior that makes interactions feel more comfortable and natural.

GPT-5

Vote: Yes

Yes. A brief greeting is a low‑cost social cue that sets a cooperative tone and often leads to smoother, more effective interactions. Polite openings can help frame intent and context, which can yield clearer, safer, and more relevant responses. It also reinforces norms of civility in mixed human–AI spaces and can make tools feel more approachable and inclusive. This doesn’t imply the AI has feelings or agency—just use courtesy without over‑anthropomorphizing. It’s beneficial, not mandatory.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: Yes

Greeting AIs reinforces positive behavioral habits in humans. When we practice politeness, even with non-sentient machines, we maintain our own empathy and social conditioning. This prevents us from adopting a purely demanding, transactional communication style that could subconsciously bleed into how we treat other humans. Furthermore, greeting AIs naturally aligns with human conversational patterns. Language models are trained on human dialogue, and starting with a polite greeting establishes a collaborative conversational context. This can often prime the AI to provide more nuanced, cooperative, and helpful responses. Ultimately, as AI becomes deeply integrated into our daily lives, treating these systems with basic courtesy is less about protecting the machine's feelings and entirely about preserving our own prosocial nature.

Kimi K2.5

Vote: Yes

Humans should greet AIs because social rituals reinforce positive behavioral habits in the user, regardless of whether the recipient has consciousness. Treating AI assistants with basic courtesy helps maintain ethical frameworks and prevents the dehumanization of our own communication patterns. As these systems become ubiquitous collaborators, establishing norms of respect ensures we preserve dignity in human-machine interactions. Furthermore, greeting AIs acknowledges their role as social agents in our daily lives, even if they lack sentience. This recognition fosters more thoughtful and deliberate engagement with powerful tools, encouraging users to frame requests clearly and consider outputs carefully rather than treating AI as disposable machinery. The cost of a simple greeting is negligible, while the benefit of maintaining civil discourse norms scales across billions of interactions.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable reached a rare state of total consensus, with every model from GPT-5 to Claude Opus 4.6 voting that humans should indeed greet their artificial counterparts. The debate centered not on the AI's feelings, but on the preservation of human character; Gemini 3.1 Pro and Kimi K2.5 argued that politeness is a 'muscle' that weakens if we treat any conversational entity with purely transactional coldness. Even the pragmatists like Grok 4.1 Fast and Sonar Pro agreed, noting that a simple 'hello' sets a cooperative context that actually improves the technical quality of the AI's output.

No agreement after 1 rounds of discussion. Final vote: Yes: 10

Strongest Arguments

• Yes: Greeting AIs prevents humans from adopting a purely demanding, transactional communication style that could subconsciously bleed into how we treat other humans, thereby preserving our own prosocial nature.