Three Simple Words Cost Millions in Electricity Bills: ChatGPT's Surprising Expense

It's often said that manners have no price, but that doesn’t hold up here...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Has acknowledged that users wasting power by politely saying "please" and "thank you" to their AI chatbots is costing them millions in electrical expenses.

Following a popular tweet on X (the platform previously known as Twitter) where someone asked, “I’m curious about how much money OpenAI might have spent on power just because users keep saying ‘please’ and ‘thanks’ to their AI,” new information was revealed.

The post garnered 5.7 million views and 182,000 likes, catching the eye of Altman. The tech tycoon highlighted the significant cost involved, though he seems unfazed by it.

"Many millions of dollars wisely invested—never say never," Altman responded.

While being courteous and practicing politeness is simply part of good etiquette, studies have shown that The Waseda University along with the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project has also shown that it enhances AI performance.

The study discovered that courteous prompts generate more high-quality answers from a large language model (LLM), the technology behind AI chatbots.

Nevertheless, there is a equilibrium because the chatbot does not appreciate too much praise; research indicates that this could lead to a decrease in the model’s effectiveness.

However, that’s not everything, since many individuals have expressed concerns about a potential AI rebellion on social media platforms, which underscores why they choose to be courteous when engaging with AI chatbots.

"After expressing 'thank you' and 'please' to ChatGPT, this feeling emerged as I hope for safety during the impending robot rebellion," stated a TikTok post that garnered 4.1 million views.

“I simply don’t want to come across as harsh. When I tell someone ‘DO THIS FOR ME,’ I feel akin to a slaveowner,” another individual stated.

While TikToker Cathy ( @cathypedrayes ) posted: "'You can't use please and thanks with ChatGPT; it just consumes unnecessary resources.'"

"God forbid a girl plans for a robot uprising."

As Altman put it, you can never be certain.

Elsewhere, a unusual ChatGPT phenomenon has people discovering how their pets would appear as humans , and Could Studio Ghibli AI-generated images become prohibited in Japan?

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