Saying ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT is costly but maybe it’s worth the price

The question of whether to be polite to artificial intelligence may seem a moot point — it is artificial, after all. But Sam Altman, chief executive of artificial intelligence company OpenAI, recently shed light on the cost of adding an extra “Please!” or “Thank you!” to chatbot prompts.

Someone posted on social platform X last week: “I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.”

The next day, Altman responded: “Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never…