Sam Altman Admits That Saying "Please" and "Thank You" to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power

If chivalry isn't already dead, it's certainly circling the drain. OpenAI CEO and tech billionaire Sam Altman recently admitted that people politely saying "please" and "thank you" to their AI chatbots is costing him bigtime. When one poster on X-formerly-Twitter wondered aloud "how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying 'please' and 'thank you' to their models," Altman chimed in, saying it's "tens of millions of dollars well spent." "You never know," he added. While it may seem pointless to treat an AI chatbot with respect, some AI architects say it's an important move. Microsoft's design manager Kurtis Beavers, for example, says proper etiquette "helps generate respectful, collaborative outputs." "Using polite language sets a tone for the response," Beavers notes. The argument can certainly be made; what we consider "artificial intelligence" might more accurately be described as "prediction machines," like your phone's predictive text, but with more a ... Read full article.