“I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.”

It was a seemingly random question posed by a user on X (formerly Twitter), but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman jumped in to reply that typing those words has added up to “tens of millions of dollars well spent — you never know.”

Judging from Altman’s tongue-in-cheek tone, it’s probably safe to assume he didn’t do a precise calculation. But his response prompted Futurism to speculate about whether it’s actually a waste of time and electricity to be polite to ChatGPT and other generative AI chatbots.

Apparently, being polite to AI isn’t just an unnecessary habit, misplaced anthropomorphism, or fear of our future computer overlords. instead, Kurt Beavers, a director on the design team for Microsoft Copilot, said that “using polite language sets a tone for the response,” and that when an AI model “clocks politeness, it’s more likely to be polite back.”

That said, profanity has its uses, too.