Being polite to AI? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says pleasantries are costing us more than we realise

Being polite to AI may seem harmless, endearing even, but according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, it’s adding up to millions of dollars in electricity costs for the company.

Altman, whose X bio reads “AI is cool I guess” and features a Studio Ghibli-style recreation of his profile picture, recently responded to a question about the energy cost of chatting with AI. He said:

“Tens of millions of dollars well spent—you never know.”

But what exactly does it take for ChatGPT to generate answers?

These responses aren’t pulled from thin air. ChatGPT and similar large language models (LLMs) are trained on massive datasets. They learn the patterns of language—grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure—through statistical modeling. Once deployed, they rely on intense computational power to respond to user prompts in real-time.

That computational power consumes a huge amount of electricity, much of it still sourced from fossil fuels. The process of training these models alone can generate a considerable carbon footprint. 

A study shows ChatGPT’s monthly carbon emissions are equivalent to 260 transatlantic flights from New York to London. That’s nearly three times more than Taylor Swift’s infamous 98 private jet trips she took last year all together—and she caught serious heat for that! (So, if we're pointing fingers at someone for climate change, are we sure individuals are to blame?}

And that’s just the training phase. Running the models, i.e., answering your queries, also consumes energy. What’s more, data centers must be kept cool to function efficiently, often requiring vast amounts of water for cooling systems.

While the data centres are primarily located in Texas, USA, OpenAI also plans to expand to India to better serve its growing user base in that region. This could potentially strain limited resources like water—something that hasn’t been talked about enough. 

It’s understandable that some people, inspired by The Matrix or sci-fi tropes, are kind to AI, just in case robots take over the world. But in the real world, our manners could actually end up costing our environment far more than we realize!

As of December 2024, ChatGPT has 400 million weekly active users globally, including 67.7 million in the US.