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

Question

Sam Altman says OpenAI is spending "tens of millions of dollars" processing chatbot queries made with proper etiquette.

I have concluded that this article claim is fragmented. Within the article written by Joe Wilkins it is said that, "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.'" This quote pulled from the article clearly states that a no-name poster on X made the above claim and in response Sam Altman says it was money well spent and then refutes by saying we will never know.

Answer 1

There appears to be several claims to break down here, but the main two--that Sam Altman says OpenAI is spending "tens of millions of dollars" processing chatbot queries with writing etiquette, and that saying "please" and "thank you" to OpenAI actually does cost money--are true. 

Firstly, the response to the original question on X comes directly from Sam Altman's certified X Account. He writes, "tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know." This stands as a primary source and proof that this is a real quote by Altman. 

Sam Altman on X: "@tomieinlove tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know" / X

Next, the below New York Times article works to explain the details of how writing "please" and "thank you" to AI costs money. The article quotes a professor of physics at George Washington University, Neil Johnson, who says that using ChatGPT "involves electrons moving through transitions--that needs energy." Johnson adds that said energy costs money, which he expands upon by likening the processing steps of an AI bot to opening a package; every extra word is more packing material through which the bot sifts before arriving at the actual product/content. In other words, adding "please" and "thank you" in writing to chatbots only adds extra words (which require extra costly processing power) for AI to compute. 

Saying ‘Thank You’ to ChatGPT Is Costly. But Maybe It’s Worth the Price. - The New York Times

Additionally, this Washington Post article adds more context to the quote by revealing how AI processing requires massive amounts of water to cool the heat it generates from processing. Providing this water to these machines, of course, costs money as well, and Altman's claim that using only a couple extra words per chatbot interaction costs "tens of millions of dollars" suddenly no longer seems outlandish. 

How much energy can AI use? Breaking down the toll of each ChatGPT query - The Washington Post

Between the primary source of Altman's certified X account and these two stories from credible news organizations, one can conclude that Sam Altman actually made this claim, and also that the claim is true. 

However, that he said this money is "wasted" (as it says in the original thumbnail for this News Detective post but not in the below description) is false. In fact, Altman's quote implies that the expenditure for these niceties is "well spent," and the body of the above New York Times article addresses the implications of being polite to chatbots despite the cost. The Futurism article linked by izzy_savannah (Sam Altman Admits That Saying "Please" and "Thank You" to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power) claims that Altman thinks using this etiquette wastes money, when he in fact, based on his original X post, he does not. According to their "About Us" page (About Us - Futurism), Futurism is independent and appears to have no political affiliations/motives to bend the truth of this story, so I would chalk up the misleading headline to an innocently poor choice of words. As of now, whether or not using "please" and "thank you" is a waste of money remains to be seen and stands as an opinion. 

To break it down:

Sam Altman said this quote = TRUE 

Using "please" and "thank you" with AI costs money = TRUE 

Altman thinks this is a waste of money = FALSE

Using "please" and "thank you" with AI is a waste of money = OPINION

Comments

I like your approach and how you broke down every sub-claim. Nice job!

---

This approach, with the use of multiple sources to back up one another, does an excellent job conveying the truth of the original statement. After reading your fact check and checking out the articles, I can confidently say I agree that Sam Altman really said this

---

This is a great factcheck. You have analyzed the main point of this claim while using multiple external sources to confirm the statements made in the claim. Going through the smaller claims within the original post also helps confirm the claim and prove the overall statements.

Answer 2

As I looked through the source of the claim from the article (the account who posted it), the account seemed credible. While I do not believe it was mentioned what he studied for his undergrad, it says he graduated cum laude. Also, it says he covers tech, policy, business, and governance for Futurism. Additionally, he has previous experience at Jacobin, Verso and Blue Labyrinths. While Futurism is not a large, well-known journalism platform, it seems reputable. Therefore, the investigation found the account who posted it was mostly reputable. The link for a trusted source on the same claim/topic is below. The source is a well-known, reputable one being USA Today. It also talks about this claim that entering "please" and "thank you" into ChatGPT causes the company a considerable amount of money. Therefore, it seems that this claim is accurate. The original first instance of this claim/idea was when Sam Altman responded to a question on X. It asked about the general cost of politeness input into ChatGPT. He responded saying, “tens of millions of dollars well spent,”. This source is included below.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/04/22/please-thank-you-chatgpt-openai-energy-costs/83207447007/

https://www.aol.com/sam-altman-says-please-thank-181152056.html

Answer 3

In order to assess the credibility of this claim, I first gathered some information on the company that originally posted the article. Futurism is a technological and scientific news organization that claims they have a "commitment to accuracy and ethics in journalism...and publish our news and features entirely free of editorial interference from our parent company." Futurism is owned by Recurrent Ventures, a media company that owns various other scientific and lifestyle news organizations. I can find no explicit evidence of underlying affiliation or conflict of interest in their ownership and production, so it's safe to assume that Futurism is at least a somewhat credible source.

As for the claim itself, the article directly pulls from a exchange on X (formerly Twitter) where Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, responded to a user who tweeted "I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying “please” and “thank you” to their models." Sam's response (from his verified account) was as follows: "tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know." Although this is not necessarily an outright admiral of what the article claims, it does confirm that Altman has acknowledged the issue and confirmed it to some extent, making this claim true.

Sources:

https://futurism.com/altman-please-thanks-chatgpt

https://futurism.com/about

https://x.com/tomieinlove/status/1912287012058722659

https://x.com/sama/status/1912646035979239430

Answer 4

This is a response made by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who was replying to a user on X who questioned how much money is lost in electricity costs when people use unnecessary phrases when talking AI chat models. Altman claims it's "tens of millions of dollars well spent" but also adds "you never know". 

As of April 2025, Altman casually claimed that ChatGPT has doubled in users from 500 million, implying that it's nearly at 1 billion now (Forbes). With this emergence of usage, people have growing concerns relating to the energy it takes to operate these AI models. From reputable reports, it's well known that an AI search engines require a lot more energy, but the exact amount differs per sources. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a single ChatGPT request takes 2.9 watt-hours, almost 10 times more than a Google search. They claim, "If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day ... the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt-hours a year -- the amount consumed by about 1.5 million European Union residents" (Vox). 

This means, definitely, the increased search requests from adding unnecessary (as in etiquette) inputs will waste energy over time. Similar to what Altman said, it's difficult to put an exact number to it as it's scale has increased exponentially. I believe the original claim/response very likely to be true. With the billions of AI requests, anything that increases the inputs and outputs from these models will cost/use more energy.

Comments

I appreciate the context provided in this fact-check, it summarises the claim well and references a number of sources to evidence the energy consumption of AI. The fact-check recognises that  the increased use of AI models such as OpenAI will inevitably will result in greater energy consumption. I would add to this that it is difficult however to attribute the energy cost to a specific phrase such as ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. The fact-check could be strengthened by exploring the specific effect of such phrases. For example it could be helpful to research the assertion that phrases such as ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ do not demand such significant computation, and therefore energy demand, as other prompts. This could provide an useful quantitative metric to compare. Overall I agree with the claim’s conclusion but think that more research could decipher if the claim was rhetorical or based in measurable fact.