The question of whether to be polite to artificial intelligence may seem a moot point — 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 “Please!” or “Thank you!” to chatbot prompts.
Someone posted on 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, Mr. Altman responded: “Tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know.”
First thing’s 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 — say, tissue paper around a perfume bottle — to get to the content. That constitutes extra work.
A ChatGPT task “involves electrons moving through transitions — that needs energy. Where’s that energy going to come from?” Dr. Johnson said, adding, “Who is paying for it?”
The A.I. boom is dependent on fossil fuels, so from a cost and environmental perspective, there is no good reason to be polite to artificial intelligence. But culturally, there may be a good reason to pay for it.
Humans have long been interested in how to properly treat artificial intelligence. Take the famous “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode “The Measure of a Man,” which examines whether the android Data should receive the full rights of sentient beings. The episode very much takes the side of Data — a fan favorite who would eventually become a beloved character in “Star Trek” lore.
In 2019, a Pew Research study found that 54 percent of people who owned smart speakers such as Amazon Echo or Google Home reported saying…