Your politeness will increase OpenAI’s costs by tens of millions of dollars

Sam Altman stated that saying “please” or “thank you” would increase OpenAI’s costs by tens of millions of dollars

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that users’ polite behavior, such as saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT, has brought tens of millions of dollars in operating expenses to the company.

A user on X wants to know how much OpenAI spent on polite communication. How much did OpenAI lose on electricity bills when people say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models? ”The user asked.

Millions of dollars are worth it, “Ultraman replied,” who knows

These polite expressions may seem insignificant, but they require ChatGPT to interpret and generate complete responses, which increases computational load and consequently increases energy consumption and costs.

The energy demand of artificial intelligence

According to a report by Goldman Sachs, each ChatGPT-4 query requires approximately 2.9 watt hours of electricity, which is about ten times more than a standard Google search. OpenAI processes over 1 billion queries per day, which means a daily energy consumption of approximately 2.9 million kilowatt hours.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) predicts that by 2030, data centers may consume up to 9.1% of the electricity in the United States driven by artificial intelligence workloads. Similarly, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that by 2030, data centers will account for over 20% of the growth in electricity demand in developed economies.

Given these challenges, Altman stated that breakthroughs in clean energy are needed to sustainably power artificial intelligence systems. In response to the growing energy demand, he invested in nuclear fusion company Helion Energy and solar startup Exowatt. OpenAI is also committed to enhancing the functionality of its data centers to meet future needs.