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The Cost of Courtesy
Following a query on X, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, humorously confirmed that using polite language in interactions with ChatGPT incurs tangible financial and environmental costs. This behavior indeed accounts for tens of millions of dollars annually in electricity costs for his company.
This figure stems from the computational processing of these additional words. When a user sends a simple thank you to ChatGPT, it triggers an analysis and generates a suitable response from a language model housed in a data center that consumes a lot of energy. Thus, even a brief response requires a significant amount of computation.
How Much Does It Cost?
According to a study by the University of California, a 100-word response consumes 140 Wh of energy, enough to light up 15 LED bulbs for an hour. With millions of daily requests, the costs quickly add up.
Nonetheless, Sam Altman doesn’t regret this usage. It’s tens of millions of dollars well spent
, he stated. Behind the irony, there’s a realization: this politeness signifies a form of humanizing AI, which transforms voice or text assistants into true conversational partners.
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A survey conducted in late 2024 indicated that 67% of American users are polite to their chatbot, 55% out of personal and moral conviction, and 12% just in case the AI remembers. Some even added humorously, joking about currying favor with AI in a hypothetical future where it might dominate… While the reasons might be amusing, they clearly illustrate the complex relationship many have with these increasingly intelligent tools.
A Tangible Environmental Impact
But beyond this courtesy lies a very real issue: the energy cost of language models like GPT-4. With data centers around the world, OpenAI uses a massive amount of electricity to operate its models.
From an individual user’s perspective, the difference is negligible. But multiplied by 800 million weekly users (according to Sam Altman), these interactions significantly burden an already energy-intensive infrastructure.
Should we then eliminate the “thank yous”? Not necessarily. Experts in conversational design, like Kurtis Beavers at Microsoft, believe that polite language improves the quality of responses. The AI often reflects the tone it is given
, he explains. A clear and respectful prompt is thus more likely to elicit a coherent and nuanced response—reflective of its creator (the one behind the prompt).