Users being polite to ChatGPT is costing OpenAI millions — Sam Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says users sending “please” and “thank you” messages to ChatGPT is costing the company tens of millions of dollars.

“Tens of millions of dollars well spent -- you never know,” Altman said on April 16 after being asked to estimate the cost on X.

Altman’s response sparked discussion about what drives users to interact with AI models in a polite manner.

Some AI users say they interact politely with the bots in case AI becomes sentient and starts treating people based on how they interacted with it in the past.

Others, such as engineer Carl Youngblood, claim they’re motivated to treat the AI well for personal development:

A December 2024 survey by Future found that 67% of American users are polite to AI assistants, with 55% doing so because it's the right thing to do, and the other 12% doing so out of fear that mistreating the bots could come back to haunt them.

A September 2023 research paper from Digiconomist founder and Bitcoin mining critic Alex de Vries states that a single ChatGPT query requires around three watt-hours of electricity.

However, data analyst Josh You from AI research institute Epoch AI argues the figure is an overestimate, and is closer to 0.3 watt-hours due to more efficient models and hardware compared to 2023.

One responder to Altman’s post wondered why ChatGPT doesn’t have a solution to save electricity costs on courtesy words like please and thank you.

Altman recently stated that the cost of AI output has been falling tenfold every year as AI models become more efficient.

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Meanwhile, OpenAI expects to more than triple its revenue this year to $12.7 billion, despite an uptick in competition from the likes of China’s DeepSeek and others making rapid progress.

OpenAI does not expect to be cash-flow positive until 2029, when it expects its revenue to top $125 billion.

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