GUWAHATI: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has acknowledged that users being polite to ChatGPT is contributing to an increase in operational costs for the company. The statement was made in response to a light-hearted query on social media regarding the energy expense of users frequently adding “please” and “thank you” in their interactions with the AI.
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Recently, a user on X asked how much electricity cost OpenAI had incurred from such politeness. In response, Altman said that the figure could be in the range of “tens of millions of dollars,” calling it “money well spent.”
While the remark drew humorous responses online, it highlighted the significant energy demands associated with AI usage. Every interaction with ChatGPT, however brief or courteous, requires full computational processing by a large language model. These operations consume notable amounts of power due to the complexity and size of the underlying AI systems.
Relatedly, another report has stated that power consumption in data centres is increasing sharply as generative AI workloads grow. It estimates that AI could account for around 19 per cent of total data centre electricity demand by 2028. The report further noted that a single ChatGPT-4 query consumes approximately 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, which is nearly ten times higher than a standard internet search.
With ChatGPT receiving over a billion queries daily, OpenAI’s estimated daily electricity usage stands at nearly 2.9 million kilowatt-hours.
