Why Saying ‘Please’ to ChatGPT Costs OpenAI Millions

When you ask ChatGPT a question, do you slip in a “please” or sign off with a “thank you”? If so, you’re part of a surprising trend that’s costing OpenAI tens of millions of dollars a year.

According to CEO Sam Altman, those small courtesies, multiplied across the AI’s 350 million weekly users, are racking up a hefty bill in electricity and computational power.

In a world where artificial intelligence is becoming a daily companion, the price of politeness is sparking questions about technology, human habits, and the sustainability of our digital interactions.

The Math Behind Manners

The mechanics are deceptively simple. ChatGPT breaks every input—words, punctuation, even emojis—into “tokens,” tiny units of data that require computational muscle to process. A polite prompt like

“Please, explain quantum physics” generates more tokens than a curt “Explain quantum physics.” Individually, the difference is trivial, a mere whisper of electricity in OpenAI’s sprawling data centers. But with billions of queries pouring in daily, those whispers become a roar.

“It’s tens of millions of dollars in electricity and compute,” Mr. Altman revealed in a recent X post, a figure that accounts for not just power but the cooling systems and hardware wear that keep OpenAI’s servers humming.

A Goldman Sachs report pegs a single GPT-4o query at about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity—down from the 2.9 watt-hours of earlier models but still significant at scale. For perspective, that’s comparable to a Google search, yet ChatGPT’s conversational nature invites chattier, often politer inputs, amplifying the cost.

Why We’re Nice to AI

Politeness to machines isn’t just a quirk—it’s a cultural phenomenon. A 2024 survey found that 67 percent of Americans use courteous language with AI, some out of habit, others to avoid offending a system they half-jokingly fear might “remember” them.

On X, users confess to thanking ChatGPT “just in case it goes sentient” or apologizing for “bothering” it after hours. These habits reflect how we’re reshaping our relationship with technology, treating AI less like a tool and more like a colleague.

There’s a practical side, too. Research from Waseda University and Japan’s RIKEN Center shows that polite prompts can boost AI performance. GPT-3.5 performed 15.6 percent better on tasks when addressed courteously, and GPT-4 showed less bias with thoughtfully worded inputs.

“Polite language sets a tone,” said Kurtis Beavers, a product manager at Microsoft, which collaborates with OpenAI.

“It aligns with how the AI was trained on human dialogue, where ‘please’ signals cooperation.” The catch? Better responses come at the cost of more tokens, more processing, and more energy.

The Environmental Cost of Courtesy

Politeness carries a hidden toll beyond OpenAI’s budget. The company’s data centers, packed with power-hungry GPUs, strain energy grids and water supplies for cooling.

Each “please” and “thank you” adds to a carbon footprint that’s increasingly hard to ignore, especially as AI adoption surges—98 percent of companies are now investing in AI, per recent reports. Could OpenAI encourage shorter prompts or compress polite phrases to save resources? Such fixes risk dulling ChatGPT’s nuanced responses, which rely on understanding tone and intent.

For now, OpenAI seems to embrace the tradeoff. Mr. Altman called the millions spent on politeness “well spent,” suggesting that a friendly, human-like AI is central to ChatGPT’s appeal. But as the company scales, the balance between user experience and sustainability looms larger.

A Kinder, Costlier Future?

The politeness problem underscores a broader truth: Even our smallest digital habits have outsized consequences. OpenAI could explore solutions like lightweight models for casual queries or algorithms that streamline courteous language without sacrificing quality.

For users, it’s a nudge to consider efficiency, especially in high-volume settings like businesses using OpenAI’s API. Yet the instinct to say “please” runs deep, a human gesture in a machine-driven world.

The next time you thank ChatGPT, you might pause. That small act of kindness isn’t just a nod to civility—it’s a multimillion-dollar choice, one that OpenAI is paying for, token by token.