Some people point out that using polite expressions such as "please" and "thank you" to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT may bring huge cost burdens from the perspective of enterprises.

According to the US IT media "The Verge", OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently responded to a user's question on the social platform X, saying that "(being too polite to AI) has cost OpenAI tens of millions of dollars in electricity bills", which has attracted attention.

The user asked: "People repeatedly say "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT. I'm curious about how much electricity this will cost OpenAI." In response to this, CEO Altman personally made the above response. Then, he added: "It is not clear what will happen exactly."

This is because when the number of words contained in the user's request increases or the number of requests increases, the amount of data that the server needs to process will increase, the number of replies will increase, and the power consumption will increase accordingly.

For example, for a simple greeting like "Thank you for your answer", ChatGPT will also be designed to reply "You're welcome! If you need anything else, feel free to ask me for help", and these "polite interactions" accumulate and cost a lot of money.

In fact, there are many users who speak politely to AI. According to a questionnaire survey conducted by Future PLC (Future Publishing, UK), a global media group, at the end of last year, 67% of American respondents said they would talk to AI chatbots in a polite manner.

Among these people, 55% said "because it is morally right", and 12% gave interesting reasons such as "worrying that AI will rebel". The answer "AI rebels" means that they are worried that AI is in a bad mood, so they coax it, which also shows the extent to which users regard AI as an individual similar to humans.

This trend is not just a simple psychological reaction. The cognition that "if you speak politely to AI, its answers will be better" is also widely recognized. In fact, some AI designers, such as Microsoft's design director, have made statements such as "being polite to AI helps achieve cooperative results."

This approach may be necessary from the perspective of improving the quality of answers, and being polite to AI may also be ethically positive. However, some people also point out that fundamentally, this is a factor that increases power consumption and has a negative impact on the environment.

Currently, data centers that drive AI account for about 2% of global electricity consumption, and this number is expected to increase sharply as AI services become popular in all aspects of life.