Being Kind to AI Will Consume More Tokens?

Lately, I was observing how people interact with AI models. My observation is mostly based on colleagues, friends and online youtube tutorials on writing the best prompts. At the end, I’ve noticed people have wildly different approaches. Some are super direct and commanding (I live in The Netherlands, I would call it the “Dutch directness”) while others are adding “please” and “thank you”. Does being polite to AI actually cost us more in tokens?

The answer is yes, it does. Adding a few polite words to your prompts might cost you an extra few cents per month unless you’re absolutely sending thousands of requests daily.

Before we dive into this, let’s have a quick review on how this whole token thing works. When you send a message to an AI, it doesn’t just read your words like a human would. Instead, it breaks everything down into tokens, which are basically chunks of text that could be whole words, parts of words, or even just punctuation marks. Every single character you type gets converted into these tokens, then the AI analyzes all these tokens to understand what you’re asking for, picking up on patterns, context, and meaning from the way these tokens are arranged together. For example:

Debug this (2 tokens)

versus

Please debug this function and explain
me the results (9 tokens)

Same basic request, but one uses more than four times the tokens of the other, and the process can be slower because the AI has to process more information.

The training data connection

These AI models learned from massive amounts of human text, and a lot of that text includes polite, conversational language. While the AI doesn’t actually care if you’re nice to it, it has learned patterns where polite requests often come with more context and lead to more detailed, helpful responses.

It’s not that the AI is rewarding your politeness, it’s more that polite language tends to be associated with clearer communication in the training data. When you ask nicely, you’re tapping into those learned patterns of effective human communication.

But here’s something worth considering: your conversations with AI don’t just disappear into the void. Many AI systems use interactions to improve their models over time. This means that when you’re polite and kind in your prompts, you’re actually contributing to making AI more polite and helpful in the future. If millions of people start being more courteous with AI, future versions will learn that this is how humans naturally communicate.

A commitment for the future

This becomes especially important when we think about younger generations who are growing up with AI as a normal part of their lives. Kids and teenagers are learning how to interact with these systems right now, and the patterns they establish could shape how AI responds for years to come. If we normalize polite, respectful communication with AI, we’re essentially teaching future AI models that this is the standard way humans like to interact. On the flip side, if everyone starts being rude and demanding, that becomes the learned behaviour pattern too.

So, please be kind. To AI but especially to each other. And being kind to each other is free of charge.