Don't Say 'Please' and 'Thank You' to ChatGPT, Here's Why

Don’t Say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’ to ChatGPT, Here’s Why Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has urged AI users not to behave politely when using ChatGPT. Politeness apparently has a significant impact on OpenAI’s operational costs. According to him, saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT costs the company a lot of money. This is because it triggers a substantial surge in electricity costs. “Tens of millions of dollars spent - you’ll never know,” Altman wrote on his X account, responding to a netizen’s question about the financial impact of polite interactions with ChatGPT. This is because ChatGPT operates using large language models (LLMs) that require enormous computational power. These models run on thousands of high-performance GPU units in data centres that consume fantastic amounts of energy. For illustration, a short AI response like a paragraph or email can consume around 0.14 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, equivalent to powering 14 LED lights for one hour. When multiplied by billions of interactions per day, energy consumption swells dramatically. Citing the New York Post, Sunday (26/4/2026), data centres contribute about 2% to global electricity consumption. This figure is estimated to surge with the rapid adoption of generative AI. Nevertheless, some AI experts believe that showing politeness remains important in shaping more positive interactions with AI. Kurtis Beavers from the Microsoft Copilot design team stated that polite language elicits more collaborative and professional responses from AI. “When AI detects a polite tone, it tends to respond in kind,” wrote Microsoft WorkLab, Microsoft’s internal media focused on AI adoption in the workplace. In fact, a 2024 survey showed that 67% of users in the US routinely use polite language when interacting with chatbots.