By Mallory Mattingly
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman finds a simple “please” and “thank you” surprisingly very expensive for the ChatGPT AI bot.
A user on X asked, “I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.”
Altman replied, “Tens of millions of dollars well spent–you never know.”
tens of millions of dollars well spent–you never know
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 16, 2025
So, why does it cost OpenAI “tens of millions of dollars” because of its users’ politeness?
These chatbots run on large language models (LLMs) that rely on extensive computational infrastructure within their data centers. The models also use several thousand high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) to run efficiently.
The GPUs perform millions of tasks daily and require prompt responses within seconds, which requires a large amount of energy.
According to the New York Post, one written response from AI can “consume as much as 0.14 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy — comparable to keeping 14 LED bulbs lit for one hour.”
But despite the cost and energy expenditure required, the director of the design team for Microsoft Copilot, Kurtis Beavers, says users should use politeness when interacting with AI models.
Related: OpenAI’s Latest Update Promises Even More Intelligent AI
Beavers told Tech Seven Partners that “using polite language sets the tone for AI responses. Large language models (LLMs), also known as generative AI, learn from human conversations. Similar to how email autocomplete predicts your next word, LLMs predict sentences or paragraphs based on your input. When you’re polite, the AI is more likely to reciprocate. Just like in human interactions, kindness begets kindness.”
Beavers added that when a user acknowledges the chatbot’s help, it “not only ensures graciousness in return but also enhances the AI’s responsiveness and performance.”
A 2024 survey conducted by Future, the publishing company that runs Tech Radar, found that “of the 67% of people surveyed who said they’re always polite to AI, 82% answered that they did so simply because it’s ‘nice’ to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ — regardless of whether you’re speaking to an AI or human. The remaining 18% of this group said that they’re polite in case there’s ever an AI uprising — banking on their previous politeness as a means of survival.”
“It is encouraging to see that users feel that being polite to AI-powered assistants is the right thing to do,” Chief Analyst at CCS Insight, Ben Wood, explained. “Personally, I think this is important from a societal perspective. If it becomes acceptable to be disrespectful to AI assistants, that behaviour will start to leech into interpersonal interactions, and that’s a slippery slope.”
“This is not a new direction, and it’s worth noting that Amazon introduced a ‘politeness feature’ called Magic Word back in 2018, which encouraged children to say ‘please and thank you’ by acknowledging use of the terms,” he added.
Even though a simple “please” and “thank you” can cost OpenAI millions, many AI experts believe that being polite even to chatbots is worth it.
Read Next: How Will OpenAI’s Recent GPT Update Impact Society?
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