Responding to an X user who wondered out loud, “How much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying 'please' and 'thank you' to their models,” Altman said that it’s “tens of millions of dollars well spent.”
“You never know,” he added.
tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know
— Sam Altman (@sama) April 16, 2025
I don’t know about you, but it does seem like a productive thing to do, and treat the robots respectfully, so they hopefully remember when they take over one day. Kidding, of course.
Microsoft’s design manager Kurtis Beavers says proper etiquette “helps generate respectful, collaborative outputs.”
"Using polite language sets a tone for the response," Beavers notes. WorkLab memo notes. "Generative AI also mirrors the levels of professionalism, clarity, and detail in the prompts you provide."
A Goldman Sachs report revealed that each ChatGPT-4 query uses approximately 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, which is about ten times more than a standard Google search.
OpenAI processes over one billion queries daily, which amounts to a daily energy consumption of about 2.9 million kilowatt-hours.
