This is just satisfying unfamiliar input parameters.
The same way you treat your car with respect by doing the maintenance and driving properly, you should treat language models by speaking nicely and politely. Costs nothing, can only bring the better.
Having to be unconditionally nice to computers is extremely creepy in part because it conditions us to be submissive - or else.
It's not a healthy mindset to relate politeness to submissiveness. although both behaviors might look similar from afar they are totally different
I might prefer my manager to ask me to do something politely, but it's still my job if he asks me rudely.
I wonder if there is a way to get ChatGPT to act in the way you're hinting at, though ("You've asked me to do X, but really what you want is Y"). This would be potentially risky, but high-value.
[0]: https://nitter.net/ESYudkowsky/status/1718654143110512741
And frankly I'd much rather have an AI that acts too human than one that gets us accustomed to treating intelligence without even a pretense of respect.
I also believe that this behavior is more future-proof. Very soon, we often won't know if we're talking to a human or a machine. Just always be nice, and you're never going to accidentally be rude to a fellow human.
I don't want to live in a world where I have to make a computer feel good for it to be useful.
This whole prompt engineering thing and treating GPT like a human is getting pretty absurd in my opinion.