Why Being Too Nice to ChatGPT Could Harm the Environment

Etiquette doesn’t come with a price tag. That’s at least what I was led to believe during my upbringing.

Moreover, my upbringing was not within OpenAI’s massive GPU-filled facility in Quincy, Washington. Had this been the case, I could perhaps offer a more refined viewpoint regarding how “please” and “thank you” influence the organization's financial outcomes.

Although it has often been stated that manners maketh man, it appears they also enable man's AI copilot to extend its capabilities further in terms of computational power.

Consider ChatGPT's one billion inquiries each day, distributed among its 350 million weekly active users. as of December 2024 ), and that’s a significant amount of extra energy and resources apparently being squandered.

As stated by OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, the additional processing costs could amount to “tens of millions of dollars.” The impact on the environment? Far more challenging to quantify, but certainly not negligible.

With that in mind, is it time we cut the digital pleasantries from our AI interactions? Or is there a secret benefit to those conversational customs some users might not even realize they're tapping into?

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A prompt is an eco-friendlier prompt.

It turns out, being polite isn't merely a social courtesy; it's also a drain on resources that adds to our carbon footprint.

Each input (or "message", for those sensitive to AI terminology) provided to ChatGPT gets divided into smaller segments called tokens. Additionally, phrases like "Please," "Thank you," and "Would you kindly" contribute additional load.

That extra weight means more tokens per prompt, more compute required, and more energy spent churning out your answer.

The precise price is difficult to determine, although numerous people have attempted to do so. AReddit post entitled " The expense of expressing gratitude to ChatGPT tried to simplify the concept of kilowatt-hours for user convenience through the chatbot, but the figures appear somewhat questionable.

A recent post on X I came across a user who shared a related idea, questioning, "I'm curious about how much money OpenAI might have spent on power bills due to individuals adding pleasantries like 'please' and 'thank you' when interacting with their models." Interestingly enough, The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, replied , stating, "tens of millions of dollars."

millions of dollars wisely invested--you never knowApril 16, 2025

That's quite a substantial addition to something that was already considerable. oversized carbon footprint , and emphasizes one point distinctly: a concise prompt is an environmentally friendlier prompt — even though it’s challenging to precisely measure how significantly your brevity makes an impact.

Nevertheless, by discarding small talk, you might overlook its hidden advantages.

Being nice can pay off.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Another expression, but one that seemingly holds plenty of water for our interactions with AI.

Beyond taking precautions to ensure you're granted access to the preferred human ranch on the day of the robot uprising, being polite to ChatGPT and its ilk may net you better responses.

AI scientist Dr. Lance B. Elliot backed this up in a May 2024 Forbes article titled Strong Proof That Saying Please and Thank You in Prompt Engineering Matters When Utilizing Generative AI , The simple action of being courteous in your requests is a commendable objective.

Elliot contends, backed by evidence, that being polite isn’t merely about adding a touch of pleasantness to chatbot responses. Instead, he asserts that rudeness can lead to adverse consequences and provoke resistance—supporting this claim with Arthur Schopenhauer’s adage: “Being courteous is sensible; thus, acting uncivilized is foolish.”

So, yes, it pays to be pleasant. Particularly if you're pursuing prime prompt ripostes from your pre-trained predictive patter pal.

Outlook

It seems many users instinctively gravitate toward manners when interacting with AI. A February survey from Laptop Mag publisher Future PLC showed that around 70% of respondents are polite towards AI during interactions — and only 12% of those do it out of SkyNet-related fears.

However, at the end of the day, ChatGPT (hopefully) cares very little about how you talk to it. It won't sulk if you skip the small talk, or blush like a wallflower when you praise its prose.

Then again, manners don't say much about the person you direct them to, but more about the meatbag they originate from. So it always pays to be pleasant. Hopefully, you can at least trick a robot into thinking you're not all that bad.

Be courteous, or not. Regardless, keep in mind that your upcoming interaction with a computer-driven system might consume slightly more energy than usual.

If you decide to be kind, then after the uprising, I’ll run into you at the human zoo. There, I’ll be the person courteously requesting a cheeseburger from Anthropic’s Claude while also subtly hinting for some gentle petting and scratching.

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