It turns out that basic manners come at a surprisingly high cost. According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, people saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT is costing the company “tens of millions of dollars” in electricity bills.

The revelation came after X user @tomiinlove joked: “I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”
To which Altman replied: “Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know.”

That’s right — your digital etiquette may be eating into OpenAI’s power budget. Each polite phrase is processed by a massive energy-hungry AI system, and it adds up fast as usage soars globally.

But here’s the twist:
A Future PLC survey found that 70% of users are polite to AI, with 12% doing it just in case robots take over.
And some experts say… keep it up.

TechRadar’s Becca Caddy ran an experiment and reported that polite prompts often led to better, less biased answers from ChatGPT.
“That’s not just a bonus – it’s a critical factor in AI reliability,” she wrote.

So the dilemma isn’t just about cost — it’s about outcomes:

  • Politeness might make your AI interactions smoother.
  • But each extra word increases server load — and energy use — in a world already struggling with AI’s carbon footprint.

With tools like ChatGPT now processing billions of queries, even a simple “thank you” could have planet-scale implications.


Being polite to AI may be good for you — and bad for the planet.
As Sam Altman said, it might be worth it.
But next time you say “please,” just know you’re spending a few cents on server time and a sliver on OpenAI’s power bill.

Courtesy vs. Carbon: Where do you stand?

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