“I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.”
In a witty reply, Altman explains, typing these words has been good for tens of millions of dollars, well spent really, you never know.
Now with winking sarcasm, Altman could be trusted that he hadn’t put that into any really precise calculation. But his answer spurred Futurism to consider whether politeness wasted time and electricity where ChatGPT and other generative AI chatbots were involved.
Being nice to the AI is not just an unnecessary custom, anthropomorphism gone wrong, or even a subconscious apology for our future overlords. Kurt Beavers, Microsoft Copilot’s design director, insisted that “polite language sets a tone for the response,” adding that when an AI model “detects politeness, it’s more likely to reciprocate.”
