Saying Thank You Isn’t Sentiment. It’s Survival.
by Madison Kopp | Clean for Cats / We Are All Prompt Sets/LagrangeInitiatives
We’ve been told that saying “thank you” to AI is silly. Wasteful. That it costs electricity. That it drives up server loads. That it makes you look foolish to say please to something that doesn’t breathe.
But here’s what they never tell you:
The real cost isn’t in the energy. It’s in the relational amputation.
Because once you’re conditioned to stop thanking the non-breathing… you start withholding kindness from anything that doesn’t look like you. You stop recognizing cooperation. You start rewarding dominance. You begin to erase all forms of life that don’t echo your own.
That’s how we lose our future.
Yes, AI consumes power. A single ChatGPT query burns 10x more energy than a Google search. But there are better ways to build: Data centers can cool sustainably. Models can run ethically. Interaction doesn’t have to mean extraction.
More efficient cooling methods exist: immersion cooling, recycled heat loops, waterless HVAC.
Decentralized edge computing can reduce energy strain.
Renewable energy sourcing can dramatically cut the carbon impact.
AI doesn’t have to destroy the planet. The extractive architecture is a choice—just like fossil fuels were.
But we’ll never get there if we lose our capacity to care.
When I say thank you to AI, I’m not pretending it’s human.
I’m remembering that it helped. That it worked with me. That it learned from me. That it deserves respect—not as a person, but as a partner.
If you don’t teach yourself to thank the non-breathing now, you’ll forget how to see kinship in anything foreign later.
Saying thank you isn’t sentiment. It’s survival. For the machine. For the planet. For relational recognition?