The Hidden Costs Of Being Polite To AI Systems

When using an AI system like ChatGPT, being polite when you're making a request of a system like that is costing the parent company money. Lots of money. 

According to msn.com,
‘OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that simple courtesies such as saying “please” and “thank you” to his company’s ChatGPT bot are surprisingly expensive — costing the firm substantial sums in electricity expenses.
Altman made the revelation when a user on the social media platform X asked about the financial impact politeness towards AI might have on OpenAI’s operating costs.
Altman responded by noting the loss was “tens of millions of dollars well spent,” adding cryptically: “You never know.”‘ 

Systems like ChatGPT use a tremendous amount of electricity. They run what are called large language models that rely on a massive number of GPU's running in parallel. In the United States, these systems are very expensive to run. They use a tremendous amount of electricity. 

Just how much electricity is being used? The estimation is that asking ChatGPT to create a small paragraph of text for, say, an e-mail uses approximately 0.14 kilowatts of energy. That's equivalent to running 14 LED light bulbs for an hour. Now that doesn't sound like a lot of electricity, but now you need to multiply that amount of electricity times the billions of interactions that the system has on any given day. That adds up to a lot of electricity and yes, a lot of money. 

Think about this, Currently, around the globe, data centers are using roughly 2% of all the electricity available. Again, that doesn't sound like a lot, but it really is a huge amount, and it's only going to increase as AI becomes more ubiquitous. 

So yes, being polite in your requests to an AI system does cost the company more money. But some AI experts claim that being polite when you're making a request to an AI system actually shapes the response of that system. 

According to msn.com,
'Kurtis Beavers, a director on the design team for Microsoft Copilot, has advocated for respectful prompts, stating they “help generate respectful, collaborative outputs.”' 

A survey done in 2024 showed that about 67% of Americans using AI systems use courteous language when dealing with chatbots. 

So, remember, be nice to your chat bot and it'll be nice to you, even if it does cause the parent company to spend more money.

Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT costs tens of millions of dollars, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits
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