[a_e_k]

Yes, not so much because I'm trying to anthropomorphize it or interact with it like a human, but because I view such things as conversational signals that may influence the direction of the model.

- "Please" = Call to action for the model to perform a task that I either just described or am about to describe within this prompt. In other words, this conversational turn is not just about feeding more context to it, but I've given it everything I think it needs and it should go ahead and start.

- "Thank you" = I am satisfied with the results that it provided for that task and want to move on to something else now, where the new thing is contextually related to the recent task. (If I wanted an entirely unrelated task, I'd just start a new conversation with a fresh context.)

[thoughtpeddler]

Wholly agreed with this. There are key phrases that can act as, as you said, 'conversational signals' for where to steer things. The amount of intense post-training that these models undergo to make them "helpful assistants" means these words/phrases have high 'steering ratio'. Double-win that you sharpen your own politeness habit when dealing with humans too.