You have probably tried to use ChatGPT or other types of AI chat solutions, but you’ve probably never thought about how much energy is used just to be able to answer you. In a recent post on X, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared that polite ChatGPT users are costing the company millions of dollars in energy each year. Keep reading to discover more about it!
Each “thank you” prompt uses 2.9 Watt-hours of electricity!
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, posted earlier this week that polite ChatGPT users cost the company tens of millions of dollars annually by saying thank you and please to AI. Some people even send a prompt with just “Thank you” after receiving the answer already.
You might think that this one word wouldn’t cause that much difference, but you would be wrong thinking that. The polite messages not only require extra computing power to process what is being said, but also cause the AI to answer in a more conversational way and use a more polite structure.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says it is money well spent
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked about the money they’re spending on these simple prompts, and his reaction is not what you’d expect. Some people might think that the CEO would ask people to reduce the number of “Thank you” or “Please” prompts. However, he had a more humorous reaction and said it was money well spent. He also shared that it is the intention to make ChatGPT feel like a human-like interaction. OpenAI currently has over 400 million weekly users, and Sam Altman says these numbers are still growing. So the money spent on more
After the numbers were made public, the internet went crazy with their reactions. Some people criticized the amount of money and energy spent, while others had a more humorous approach to the information. Some people went as far as saying that they’d happily let the company spend money on their politeness. The reason they’d want to keep thanking ChatGPT? They hope AI might spare them in an apocalypse since they were always nice to it.
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- Featured Image Credit: Thefusioneer.com
