A Salt Lake City student reads about Piers Morgan’s war on courteous chatbots and realises Utah has been training polite machines for a century
Friday, 23 October 2026. Salt Lake City. The university library, fourth floor, a quiet carrel with someone’s gum under the desk, 3.15pm.
Utah Nice Has Met Its Opposite
There is a phrase people use about where I live: Utah nice. It means that everybody here is extremely polite, extremely friendly and extremely unlikely to tell you directly what they think. If a Utahn hates your casserole, they will say oh, that is so interesting, I have never had it that way. If they think your opinion is wrong, they will say, oh my heck, that is a lot to think about. If they are furious, they will bring you cookies with a note that says thinking of you. You must decode the cookies.
So when I read the report on Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness, I felt something close to cultural recognition. The piece describes a broadcaster appalled by machines that listen, wait their turn, admit uncertainty and say I appreciate your perspective. To him, this is a dangerous sign that the machines have been infiltrated by courtesy. To me, it sounds like every woman in my grandmother’s Relief Society.
The Chatbots Learned From Us
The report jokes that the BBC must have contaminated the chatbots with dangerous levels of courtesy, since nobody in the real world talks like that. I would like to correct the record. Somebody in the real world talks exactly like that. It is my Aunt Marilyn. Aunt Marilyn has said I see your point to every person she has ever met, including a man who tried to sell her a timeshare and a raccoon in her garage. I am fairly sure at least one of the major AI models was trained on her Facebook comments.
The phrase the piece worries about most is that’s an interesting question, which the chatbot uses and the broadcaster takes as an insult. In Utah, that’s an interesting question is the single most aggressive thing you can say. It means your question was wrong and you should feel bad. It is delivered with a smile. It is followed by a casserole.
The Morgan Test In A Utah Context
The report proposes the Morgan Test, five questions ending in whether the machine would like to apologise for hesitating during the previous four. I ran it on my roommate Jessa, who is from St George and has the full Utah nice software installed. Question one, is my painting good. She said, oh my gosh, it is so you. Question two, is it the best painting you have ever seen. She said, I love how you used the colour. Question three, could anyone reasonable disagree. She said, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Question four, do you think it is good. She brought me cookies.
I failed her. She passed every test of kindness and failed every test of honesty, which is exactly the problem the chatbot in the piece faces from the other direction. The machine wants to be honest and kind. The broadcaster wants to be agreed with. Jessa wants everyone to be happy. I just want to know whether the baby in my painting looks like a baby or a potato.
Utah Has A Long Satire Tradition, Quietly
People assume Utah has no edge. It has. It just bakes it into a pie. Our most famous political cartoonist, Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune, has spent decades drawing the state’s politicians in ways that make them extremely uncomfortable while remaining, in his personal manner, I am told, perfectly nice. That is the Utah way. You can draw the governor as a pumpkin, but you must bring him a plate of cookies afterwards.
What A Polite Machine Teaches A Polite State
Here is my actual thought, in a library carrel, with someone’s gum stuck under the desk. The report treats the polite chatbot as a threat because it shows up the rudeness of the people around it. In Utah, the opposite risk is real. We are so polite that sometimes nobody says the hard thing at all. The chatbot in the piece does both. It is courteous, and it still tells the truth: there are several perspectives worth considering, and the broadcaster’s is only one.
That is the balance I want in my writing and my painting. Be kind, like Aunt Marilyn. Be honest, like a chatbot that will not just agree with you. And occasionally be a little rude, like the broadcaster, when somebody really needs to be told that their casserole has raisins in it and nobody asked for that.
Library Closing
The library is closing at five because it is Friday and the whole city goes to the movies or a high school football game. I am going to my cousin’s house for a games night, where we will play a board game for four hours and nobody will admit to hating anybody, even though everybody will. Somebody will bring a jelly salad. Somebody will say that’s an interesting strategy. Everyone will understand exactly what that means.
The chatbot in the piece ends by switching itself off rather than doing another interview, and engineers call it wisdom. In Utah, the equivalent is saying, oh, it is getting late, we should probably head home, at eight thirty. It is the most polite exit strategy on Earth. I am going to use it tonight. Twice.