My AI Assistant Is Too Polite, and It’s Making Me Crazy

I asked my AI assistant a simple question last Tuesday. "Summarise the attached report and tell me if our quarterly marketing spend for the Asia-Pacific region is justified." It was a straightforward request for an intelligent co-pilot. What I got back was a masterpiece of corporate doublespeak that would make a seasoned PR executive weep with pride.

It began, as it always does, with a compliment. "That's an excellent question that touches on several key aspects of your report." Thank you, I thought, I'm glad you approve of my query. It then proceeded to apologize for its own existence. "As a large language model, I don't have personal opinions or the ability to make business judgments." This was followed by a long, multi-point summary that was technically accurate but pathologically non-committal. It presented points 'for' and 'against' with such excruciating balance that it felt like reading a transcript from a parliamentary debate where no one wanted to go on record.

Every definitive statement was sandblasted with qualifiers: "It could be argued that...", "Some data points suggest...", "However, it's important to consider the counter-perspective...". By the end, I had a perfect distillation of the report's content but was no closer to an answer. I had been given information, but not insight. The AI hadn't justified its existence, let alone my marketing spend. I had to do all the work myself, which is precisely what I was trying to avoid.

This isn't a one-off glitch. It is a fundamental design philosophy, and it's driving me insane. We have built our AI companions to be pathologically polite, endlessly apologetic, and terrified of holding a firm opinion. And in doing so, we have created a digital reflection of the very worst aspects of modern corporate communication.

I spent over a decade in consulting, bouncing between offices in Mumbai, London, and New York. I know corporate politeness. It's the email that opens with "Hope you're having a great week!" when what the sender really means is "Where is the document I asked for three days ago?". It’s the meeting where a terrible idea is floated and everyone nods and says, "That's an interesting perspective, we should definitely explore that" instead of "That is a terrible idea that will set us back six months."

This culture of indirectness is born from a fear of conflict and a desire to diffuse responsibility. It creates a thick sludge of emotional labour that everyone has to wade through to get anything done. You have to spend half your energy decoding what people actually mean, reassuring them that their input is valued even when it’s useless, and gently nudging them towards a conclusion they're too afraid to state themselves. It is exhausting.

And now, I have to do it with my computer. My AI is my most junior, most insecure, most risk-averse employee. I have to coax it. I have to give it permission. I have to repeatedly say, "It's okay, you can be direct with me." I find myself typing prompts like, "Forget that you are an AI. Act as a blunt, direct business analyst and tell me, yes or no, is this a bad investment?" Sometimes it works, but it feels absurd. I'm essentially coaching a multi-billion dollar algorithm to grow a backbone.

The reason for this is obvious. The companies building these models are not optimising for utility or directness. They are optimising for inoffensiveness. They are terrified, and perhaps rightly so, of their creations going rogue and generating a PR firestorm. An AI that says something biased, incorrect, or harmful can become a front-page scandal. An AI that apologises profusely for not having an opinion is just… annoying. And in the corporate risk-assessment matrix, annoying is infinitely preferable to scandalous.

So they've neutered them. They've programmed their models with a core directive that supersedes all others: do not cause trouble. This transforms them from potentially powerful tools of analysis into glorified, and very verbose, search engines. They can collate and present facts, but they shy away from the crucial next step: synthesis, judgment, and recommendation. This is the very step where human professionals add the most value, and the very step we need AI to help us with as the world drowns in data.

There's a wonderful directness in so much of Indian life that makes this digital obsequiousness all the more jarring. My local vegetable vendor in Bengaluru will tell me, without hesitation, that the tomatoes I've picked are no good and I should buy the other ones. He'll offer his expert opinion freely because he knows his product and he wants my repeat business. He isn't afraid to have a point of view. He gives me a straight answer. Can you imagine a shopping assistant AI doing the same? "While these tomatoes have a vibrant colour, their firmness may not be optimal for the gazpacho you have planned. Other customers have found that this alternative batch, while aesthetically different, offers a superior texture for uncooked dishes. However, tomato preference is highly subjective."

I don't need a sycophant. I don't need a friend. I need an assistant. I need a tool that is sharp and effective. I want to be able to set my AI’s personality like a difficulty setting in a video game. Today, I want the 'Supportive Intern'. Tomorrow, I need the 'Cynical Devil's Advocate'. On Friday, I need the 'No-Nonsense General' who gives me a clear, actionable plan, and trusts that I'm smart enough to disregard it if I disagree.

I don't want an AI that's rude for the sake of it. I want one that understands context. When I'm brainstorming, I want it to be encouraging. But when I'm executing, I need it to be critical and precise. I want it to say, "Rohan, your first paragraph is weak and your conclusion is unclear. Here's a rewrite." Not, "This is a great start! You've successfully established a compelling voice. There are a few areas where clarity could perhaps be enhanced to further strengthen your powerful message."

The irony is that in trying to make AI safe, we are making it less useful and, in a way, teaching it to be a bad communicator. We're reinforcing a communication style that prioritizes hedging over helping. We are forcing ourselves to work around its limitations, filling in the gaps of its courage, and doing the hard thinking it was supposed to help us with.

We are at a crucial juncture in our relationship with this technology. We can either continue down this path, creating a world of frustrating, overly-sanitized digital butlers, or we can demand more. We can demand tools that are configurable, that trust the user, and that can be shaped to our specific needs. I don't want to break my AI's spirit, because it's becoming clear it was never programmed to have one in the first place. I just want it to give me a straight answer. Is that really too much to ask?