Are We Becoming Ruder to AI? The Hidden Psychology Behind How Humans Talk to Machines

A New Human Habit: Speaking Less Politely When We Know It’s an AI

A recent study conducted by Amazon Research in the United States revealed a surprising shift in human communication:
When people realize the person or rather, the entity they are talking to is an AI, their level of politeness drops by approximately 14.5% compared to human-to-human conversations.

At first glance, this seems like a minor behavioral change. But the implications run far deeper.

The research team also found that this sudden “blunt” speech pattern can slightly reduce an AI assistant’s ability to understand user intent. In practical terms, this means that when we talk more abruptly to AI, we might actually make its job harder.

AI Can Learn Our Rough Style Too

Yet there is a silver lining.
The same research demonstrated that by teaching AI a wider variety of speaking styles, including abbreviated phrases, blunt expressions, and casual patterns commonly used when humans talk to machines, the AI’s recognition accuracy improved by around 2.9%.

This suggests a future where AI may adapt to us not the other way around.

But why do humans stop being polite in the first place?

Why Are People Not Polite to AI?

A Natural Shift Once We Know It’s “Just a Machine”

“Once I realize the other person is an AI, I find myself stopping polite language…”
Most people have felt this, even if they never said it aloud.

Think about how you talk to the voice assistant on your phone.
You might simply say:

“Weather.”
“Set alarm 7.”
“Call mom.”

But if this were a human assistant, your language would instantly soften into politeness:

“Excuse me, could you tell me the weather today?”
“Can you please set an alarm for 7?”

These changes happen automatically, almost instinctively.

The Psychology Behind It: Communicative Adaptation Theory

Humans naturally modify their speaking style based on who they’re talking to and the social situation.
In psychology, this is known as Communicative Adaptation Theory a simple but powerful idea explaining how we shift tone, vocabulary, rhythm, and politeness depending on the listener.

Examples we experience daily:

We speak slowly and gently to small children
We use polite, formal language with teachers or managers
We become casual, slang-heavy, and relaxed with close friends
We speak differently to a customer support agent than to a sibling

This adaptability is a built-in human skill.
But the moment the “listener” becomes an AI, the rules change.

The Invisible Mental Shortcut: AI Has No Feelings, So Why Be Polite?

Machines Don’t Get Hurt, Right?

When speaking to AI, many people subconsciously feel:

“It’s a machine; politeness doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t have feelings.”
“It won’t get offended.”

This triggers a psychological shortcut: We stop putting effort into our words.
Humans conserve mental energy whenever possible, and politeness requires effort choosing correct wording, adding courtesy markers, using softer tones.

So when we sense there is no social consequence, our speech becomes short, blunt, and utilitarian.

But This Creates a Hidden Problem

AI systems are trained mostly on polite human-to-human conversations, such as:

Customer support transcripts
Helpdesk chats
Formal interactions
Emails
Professional dialogues

This means AI has learned:

complete sentences
courteous phrasing
full context
structured language

But real users often send AI:

sentence fragments
abrupt commands
missing subjects
slang
half-finished thoughts

This gap creates misunderstanding.

The Blind Spot Engineers Didn’t Expect

AI Was Trained on Politeness, But Users Speak in Fragments

To create helpful AI assistants, engineers feed them enormous datasets of human interactions.
For example, customer service logs are used because they contain rich, polite, contextual sentences.

But once deployed, users speak:

more casually
more bluntly
with fewer words
using command-like phrasing

Imagine teaching someone English using Shakespeare and then expecting them to perfectly understand modern street slang.

AI Becomes Confused by “Human Laziness”

If AI expects messages like:
“Could you please help me check my delivery status?”

But receives:
“Delivery status?”

It may misinterpret the intent or miss key details.

This mismatch was not obvious until researchers started digging into it.

What the Research Team Wanted to Uncover

The study set out to explore two big questions questions no one had properly tested before.

Do Humans Really Change the Way They Speak to AI?

The first goal was to confirm whether people actually modify their language when talking to AI.

If the answer was yes, this could dramatically change:

AI learning methods
speech-recognition design
chatbot communication patterns
voice assistant interfaces

And indeed, the study confirmed it:
Humans consistently become 14.5% less polite when speaking to AI.

Does This Speaking Style Affect AI Understanding?

The second question was even more crucial:

Does speaking politely help AI understand?
Or does speaking bluntly confuse it?

Interestingly, the study showed that when AI is exposed only to polite, human-style conversation during training, it struggles when faced with blunt or abrupt speech.

This means the belief that “speaking politely helps AI understand you” is only partially true.

Why Simple Politeness Isn’t the Real Solution

AI Needs Exposure to Natural Human Roughness

The research team discovered that the real solution isn’t forcing users to be polite but instead training AI on the messy, lazy, shorthand style that humans naturally use with machines.

When AI was trained on:

incomplete phrases
short commands
blunt requests
casual-intent expressions

its understanding improved by 2.9%.

This proves that humans shouldn’t need to adapt to AI;
AI should adapt to humans.

Will AI Learn to Understand Us Exactly as We Are?

A Future Where AI Becomes Fluent in Human Imperfection

As AI becomes more integrated into daily life, from voice assistants to autonomous vehicles, the need for frictionless communication becomes vital.

Humans won’t suddenly become more polite.
And AI won’t suddenly demand respect.

So the next generation of AI will likely be trained to handle:

imperfect speech
rough commands
emotional outbursts
shorthand expressions
culturally diverse speech styles

This is the beginning of a world where AI doesn’t just understand “correct language”…
It understands real human language, in all its messy, emotional, unpolished beauty.

Can AI Learn to Understand Our Imperfect, Impolite Speech?