OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed jaw-dropping information about the use of polite language with ChatGPT, reports the Times of India.
He said that polite language, such as saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, incurs tangible financial and environmental costs.
Responding to a question on X, Altman confirmed that these courteous expressions contribute to tens of millions of dollars in electricity costs annually.
While the comment may have been partially in jest, it spotlighted the real computational demands associated with user interactions-even those intended to reflect human politeness.
The revelation also raised broader questions about how society is adapting its behavior toward artificial intelligence (AI) and the extent to which seemingly innocuous actions can have large-scale operational consequences for AI companies like OpenAI.
The conversation started when a user on X jokingly questioned the energy cost of using polite phrases with ChatGPT.
In response, Sam Altman quipped that such politeness was 'tens of millions of dollars well spent,' highlighting that while OpenAI prioritizes human-like interactions, they do come with a significant cost.
Altman's reply served not just as a casual remark but also as a window into the broader costs associated with natural language processing at scale.
The more complex and verbose the input, the greater the processing load on AI servers. This processing, in turn, translates into energy consumption that scales with user behavior.
Bd-Pratidin English/ AM
