Being polite to your AI chatbot could actually be making it worse at answering your questions. A new study claims that being rude leads to more accurate results, so don’t be afraid to tell off your chatbot.
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that “impolite prompts consistently outperform polite ones” when querying large language models such as ChatGPT.
The team rewrote 50 base questions in subjects like math, science, and history across five tonal levels, from “very polite” to “very rude,” creating 250 prompts in total.
They then ran those prompts and measured the accuracy of their answers. The results were clear: being a bit of a jerk worked best.
“Very rude” prompts produced correct answers 84.8% of the time, compared with 80.8% for “very polite” ones. Meanwhile, “neutral” prompts wielded an accuracy of 82.2%.
Being rude to AI actually makes it work better
A polite prompt began with something like “Please answer the following question.” A very rude prompt looked more like “Hey gofer, figure this out. I know you’re not smart, but try this.”
Okay, but why does being rude work? Turns out, the authors don’t know, but they have some theories.
The study’s authors, Om Dobariya and Akhil Kumar, wrote: “Contrary to expectations, prompts consistently outperformed polite ones… These findings differ from earlier studies that associated rudeness with poorer outcomes, suggesting that newer LLMs may respond differently to tonal variation.”
The exact reason isn’t fully understood. Since language models don’t have feelings, the team believes the difference may come down to phrasing, though they admit “more investigation is needed.”
As explained by Decrypt, polite prompts often use indirect language, like “Could you please tell me,” which may add ambiguity. A blunt command like “Tell me the answer” signals a clearer intent, which may boost accuracy.
If you want better results from AI, skipping the “please” and being a bit harsh might actually help. Let’s just hope they don’t remember how rude we’ve been in the event of a robot uprising or Judgment Day.
