{"id":26613,"date":"2025-04-24T21:55:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T21:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26613"},"modified":"2025-04-24T22:23:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T22:23:12","slug":"saying-thank-you-to-chatgpt-is-costly-but-maybe-its-worth-the-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26613","title":{"rendered":"Saying \u2018Thank You\u2019 to ChatGPT Is Costly. But Maybe It\u2019s Worth the Price."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Adding words to our chatbot can apparently cost tens of millions of dollars. But some fear the cost of not saying please or thank you could be higher.<\/p>\n

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The question of whether to be polite to artificial intelligence may seem a moot point \u2014 it is artificial, after all.<\/p>\n

But Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, recently shed light on the cost of adding an extra \u201cPlease!\u201d or \u201cThank you!\u201d to chatbot prompts.<\/p>\n

Someone posted on X last week: \u201cI wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying \u2018please\u2019 and \u2018thank you\u2019 to their models.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Mr. Altman responded<\/a>: \u201cTens of millions of dollars well spent \u2014 you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

First things first: Every single ask of a chatbot costs money and energy, and every additional word as part of that ask increases the cost for a server.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Neil Johnson, a physics professor at George Washington University who has studied artificial intelligence, likened extra words to packaging used for retail purchases. The bot, when handling a prompt, has to swim through the packaging \u2014 say, tissue paper around a perfume bottle \u2014 to get to the content. That constitutes extra work.<\/p>\n

A ChatGPT task \u201cinvolves electrons moving through transitions \u2014 that needs energy. Where\u2019s that energy going to come from?\u201d Dr. Johnson said, adding, \u201cWho is paying for it?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Adding words to our chatbot can apparently cost tens of millions of dollars. But some fear the cost of not saying please or thank you could be higher.The question of whether to be polite to artificial intelligence may seem a moot point \u2014 it is artificial, after all.But Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, recently shed light on the cost of adding an extra \u201cPlease!\u201d or \u201cThank you!\u201d to chatbot prompts.Someone posted on X last week: \u201cI wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying \u2018please\u2019 and \u2018thank you\u2019 to their models.\u201dThe next day, Mr. Altman responded: \u201cTens of millions of dollars well spent \u2014 you never know.\u201dFirst things first: Every single ask of a chatbot costs money and energy, and every additional word as part of that ask increases the cost for a server.Neil Johnson, a physics professor at George Washington University who has studied artificial intelligence, likened extra words to packaging used for retail purchases. The bot, when handling a prompt, has to swim through the packaging \u2014 say, tissue paper around a perfume bottle \u2014 to get to the content. That constitutes extra work.A ChatGPT task \u201cinvolves electrons moving through transitions \u2014 that needs energy. Where\u2019s that energy going to come from?\u201d Dr. Johnson said, adding, \u201cWho is paying for it?\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26591,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26615,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26613\/revisions\/26615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}