April 28, 2025 By: JK Tech
Let’s be honest, most of us have said “thank you” to ChatGPT at some point. Maybe even “please” or “good morning.” It’s a habit. We’re used to speaking to people politely, so when an AI gives us a helpful answer, it feels right to respond with kindness.
But here’s something you probably didn’t expect: those extra polite words might actually be adding to OpenAI’s electricity bill. Seriously.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently shared an interesting (and kind of amusing) observation. He mentioned that saying things like “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT might be costing millions of dollars in electricity. It sounds like a joke, but he was making a real point about the scale at which AI operates.
Behind every chat with an AI like ChatGPT is a complex web of servers, GPUs, and massive data centers, basically, a high-powered digital brain that needs a lot of energy to function. Every time you send a message, the system doesn’t just read your words. It processes context, predicts intent, searches its internal data, and crafts a reply that (hopefully) makes sense. All of that takes computing power, and computing power eats up energy.
Now, throw in a few hundred million users doing the same thing, day in and day out. Even a couple of extra words like “thanks” get multiplied on a huge scale. Altman said these interactions could be costing OpenAI millions of dollars a year in energy usage alone, just from the polite additions.
It’s kind of wild when you think about it. What seems like a harmless, even sweet gesture is actually tapping into energy resources, contributing to larger operating costs, and potentially even impacting the environment.
So, should we stop being polite to AI? That’s entirely up to you. There’s something undeniably human about our instinct to say “please” and “thank you,” even when we know we’re talking to a machine. It’s not wrong. In fact, it’s sort of wholesome.
But it’s also a reminder of how our small digital habits, when scaled up, can have very real consequences. Just like leaving your phone charger plugged in all day, or binge-streaming shows overnight, even our chats with AI have an energy footprint.
Kindness is free, but in the world of AI, it turns out, it also has a wattage.
