OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says customers sending “please” and “thanks” messages to ChatGPT is costing the corporate tens of tens of millions of {dollars}.
“Tens of tens of millions of {dollars} nicely spent — you by no means know,” Altman mentioned on April 16 after being requested to estimate the associated fee on X.
Altman’s response sparked dialogue about what drives customers to work together with AI fashions in a well mannered method.
Some AI customers say they work together politely with the bots in case AI turns into sentient and begins treating folks primarily based on how they interacted with it previously.
Others, corresponding to engineer Carl Youngblood, declare they’re motivated to deal with the AI nicely for private growth:
“Treating AIs civilly is an ethical crucial for me. I do it out of self-interest. Callousness in our day by day interactions causes our interpersonal abilities to atrophy.”
A December 2024 survey by Future discovered that 67% of American customers are well mannered to AI assistants, with 55% doing so as a result of it is the best factor to do, and the opposite 12% doing so out of concern that mistreating the bots may come again to hang-out them.
Debate over ChatGPT’s electrical energy consumption
A September 2023 analysis paper from Digiconomist founder and Bitcoin mining critic Alex de Vries states {that a} single ChatGPT question requires round three watt-hours of electrical energy.
Nonetheless, information analyst Josh You from AI analysis institute Epoch AI argues the determine is an overestimate, and is nearer to 0.3 watt-hours attributable to extra environment friendly fashions and {hardware} in comparison with 2023.
One responder to Altman’s submit questioned why ChatGPT doesn’t have an answer to save lots of electrical energy prices on courtesy phrases like please and thanks.
Altman just lately acknowledged that the price of AI output has been falling tenfold yearly as AI fashions develop into extra environment friendly.
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In the meantime, OpenAI expects to greater than triple its income this yr to $12.7 billion, regardless of an uptick in competitors from the likes of China’s DeepSeek and others making speedy progress.
OpenAI doesn’t count on to be cash-flow constructive till 2029, when it expects its income to high $125 billion.
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