Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, publicly disclosed that ordinary polite statements to ChatGPT cost the company tens of millions of dollars. The high computational requirements of AI processing create extra expenses for OpenAI each time it responds to any question, including the most pleasant requests. The announcement has left many users and viewers stunned. Learn more about it in detail via this article.
Why Being Polite to ChatGPT Is Expensive
From a superficial perspective, it seems acceptable to express gratitude to AI chatbots. All messages sent to ChatGPT create a complete processing system response that depends on powerful high-performance computing. The systems operate from massive data facilities that need extensive power and substantial water resources for operation and thermal management.
According to Altman’s comment on X (formerly Twitter), the collective cost of these polite interactions adds up quickly. While his tone was likely humorous, the underlying fact remains: being nice to AI consumes real-world resources.
The Hidden Costs of Politeness
The entire complex processing sequence always starts when users interact with ChatGPT, no matter how short the interaction is. Every request sent to ChatGPT requires 2.9 watt-hours of power, which represents a total of ten times more than typical Google search usage needs. The extensive user base at ChatGPT results in quick increases of both power usage and related costs.
The generation of electricity creates considerable water usage in addition to electricity production. Generations of responses totalling 100 words on ChatGPT require a maximum water consumption of 1,408 millilitres, which amounts to the water in three normal-sized water bottles. Data centres employ water for cooling needs during this process.
User Behavior and Its Implications
Research conducted in February showed that AI users expressed polite behaviour when speaking to robots at a rate of 67%. The survey revealed that 18% of these users spoke politely to AI since they worried about future AI control, yet 82% used polite language from habit.
AI experts believe that using polite requests generates better results from AI systems. Microsoft design director Kurtis Beavers found that polite language input has the capability to create a positive tone, which generates better and context-based answers from AI systems.
OpenAI’s Perspective: A Worthwhile Investment?
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that users’ courteous interactions with ChatGPT, such as saying “please” and “thank you”, have led to operational costs amounting to tens of millions of dollars. Despite these expenses, Altman considers them “tens of millions of dollars well spent,” emphasizing the value of fostering human-like interactions with AI systems.
AI integration in daily life demands proper management between human-friendly user interactions and environmentally conscious systems. The OpenAI findings demonstrate the need to create eco-friendly practices during both AI development and deployment processes to balance sustainability with user satisfaction levels.
Final Thoughts
Good manners directed at ChatGPT result in a substantial financial expense of millions, which reveals the sustainability concerns about artificial intelligence. Businesses, alongside consumers, need to find ways to maintain efficiency together with polite practices while promoting environmentally conscious approaches as technology use continues to grow.
