Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, shared his perspective on user politeness towards ChatGPT, noting that requests with 'please' and 'thank you' are costing the company millions.
Sam Altman's Opinion on User Politeness
Altman stated that courteous requests from users towards ChatGPT are costing the company tens of millions of dollars. "Tens of millions of dollars well spent -- you never know," he commented on April 16.
Reasons for User Politeness to AI
Some AI users mention that interacting politely with bots might affect their behavior if AI becomes sentient. Engineer Carl Youngblood asserted: "Treating AIs with courtesy is a moral imperative for me. I do it out of self-interest. Callousness in our daily interactions causes our interpersonal skills to atrophy."
Debate on ChatGPT's Electricity Consumption
A September 2023 study indicated that a single ChatGPT query uses about three watt-hours of electricity. However, another analyst suggests that this figure is an overestimate and is closer to 0.3 watt-hours due to more efficient models and hardware. Altman also noted that the cost of AI output has been decreasing tenfold each year with advancements in AI models.
The discussion about user politeness toward AI and the associated costs raises important questions about the future of human-technology interaction and the consumption of resources in AI usage.
