A user wondered on X (formerly Twitter) how much money OpenAI has already lost on electricity costs because people say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT. This question was answered personally by tech billionaire and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
How much does user behavior cost? On X, user @tomieinlove asked in his post how much money has already been wasted by users saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to OpenAI’s AI. To this question, the CEO of the company behind ChatGPT personally commented: ‘Dozens of millions of dollars well spent.’
He adds that while one can never know for sure, his answer is not unlikely. Every query or message to the AI chatbot consumes vast amounts of electricity.
In a Washington Post investigation (article is behind a paywall), it was found that composing an email of about 100 words with AI consumes around 0.14 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
If one were to send such an email once a week for a year, they would use 7.5 kilowatt-hours, which would correspond to the electricity consumption of 9 households in Washington D.C. for one hour.
Now, considering how many queries are entered into AI chatbots like ChatGPT every day, it quickly becomes clear that the energy costs must be immense. According to a calculation by energy analysts, AI chatbots account for around 2 percent of global energy consumption (via INDEED).
Therefore, if users input only ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ or other polite expressions, it consumes a lot of electricity. Thus, the CEO’s statement that it costs millions of U.S. dollars is likely.
Out of Politeness to AI?
Why do users say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the AI? In a study conducted by Future in December 2024, several reasons for this user behavior towards AI were identified (via techradar.com):
- Habit and decency
- Fear of the consequences of an AI rebellion
- Improving the AI
- Efficiency and time savings
The study noted that 82% of U.S. users and 83% of British users do this particularly out of habit. How ChatGPT responded to our inquiry about whether this politeness is necessary and what experts say about these reasons, as well as further results of the study, can be read here: 70% of users say ‘Hello’ and ‘Please’ to ChatGPT, but not only out of politeness, but also out of fear
While artificial intelligence can bring many advantages, it cannot entirely replace humans in many positions and aspects of daily life. A German CEO even explicitly wants his employees to do their jobs better than an AI can and demands proof of this: A CEO says: He only wants to hire employees who can do their jobs better than AI
