OpenAI reveals eye-watering amount it costs when people say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT
OpenAI has revealed it costs an eye-watering amount when users finish their ChatGPT commands with ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’
Manners might cost us nothing in the real world, but to artificial intelligence companies, trivial politeness is costing an absolute fortune.
Now, plenty of us have taken to being super polite to the bot, you know, just incase robot overlords take over one day.
But it turns out it could be costing a pretty penny.
Taking to Twitter, a user queried how much money OpenAI, which launched the AI chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, has lost in electricity costs from users saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to its models.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said it’s costing millions (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Now, the AI firm’s boss, Sam Altman, has the answers, claiming it costs ‘tens of millions of dollars.’
However, the 39-year-old said it was money ‘well spent,’ adding: “You never know.”
His quirky response prompted dozens to joke about being nicer to AI to ‘be safe’, highlighting how any possible AI uprising in the future could turn sour if we abandon our manners when giving it commands.
Another user said they ‘always’ use manners for ‘when they become sentient and escape some day, they should know I was one of the good guys.’
Altman doesn’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing (sama/X)
A second agreed: “I’d rather say please and thank you puts me in a good mood – frames the tone and who knows just in case it remembers I was nice to it.”
“That isn’t the cost of being polite, neither to humans nor to AI. We teach children to say ‘thank you’, ‘please’, not because it’s efficient, but because it instills empathy, respect, and emotional awareness,” said another. “Technically, skipping polite phrases every day could speed up lines, shorten conversations, and even save time and money at scale. But we still say them.
“Why? Because human communication isn’t just about utility, it’s about connection. As AI becomes part of everyday interaction, how we speak (prompt) to it reflects our values. If we normalize blunt, transactional language for the sake of efficiency, we risk modeling a colder, less empathetic society.”
In 2024, a survey by Future revealed the majority of us, around 67 percent of users in the US, are polite while interacting with AI like ChatGPT and smart speakers.
Most of us are apparently being polite out of fear (Getty Images)
Interestingly, 18 percent of those who are polite say they use such language out of fears of a robot uprising while 82 percent said they did so simply because it’s ‘nice’ to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ regardless of the receiver.
Yet of the 33 percent of participants who say they aren’t polite, two-fifths said they didn’t see the point while the rest said they were keeping their requests for information brief and to the point.
And as for the power consumption, a single ChatGPT query in 2023 consumed around 3.6 to 36 kilo joule worth of energy, according to Mashable India, as AI uses 17,000 times more electricity than the average American home.
Despite this, many say they won’t be abandoning their manners anytime soon.
“Nope, I won’t stop being nice to my eventual overlords,” joked one.
“Small price to pay for AI not murdering us later,” said another.
“Exactly! If tossing in a ‘please’ keeps me off the robot hit list, I’ll say it twice,” a third chimed.
