OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has made a surprising revelation about the company's chatbot, ChatGPT. According to Altman, users' polite exchanges with the AI, such as saying "please" and "thank you," cost the company tens of millions of dollars in electricity expenses. This significant cost arises from the computational resources required to process these extra conversational responses.
Each ChatGPT query consumes approximately 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, about ten times more than a standard Google search. With over one billion queries daily, this translates to a substantial amount of energy consumption. The increased cost is due to the way AI models process polite interactions, generating longer and more detailed responses that require more computational resources.
Despite the significant cost, Altman considers it "money well spent," believing that being nice to AI might be beneficial in the future. This has sparked discussions about the hidden operational costs of AI systems and their environmental impact. Some users have responded humorously, joking about the potential benefits of being polite to AI in case of a future AI uprising.
