It is better not to be (too) nice against chatgpt – this is why

OpenAi has indicated that it is better not to be (too) nice against chatbots like chatgpt. Do you do that right? Then it costs a lot of money.

Chatgpt

Do you use Chatgpt regularly? In that case it is better not to be too nice, because that costs the company behind chatgpt millions of dollars and it is bad for the environment. It had been known for some time that Chatgpt uses an enormous amount of power. For example, the energy consumption with an assignment in Chatgpt is about ten times higher than with Google. That has to do with the computing power behind the chatbot, which needs much more energy than Google.

This is also due to the amount of water needed to cool the chatgpt servers. OpenAI, the company behind Chatgpt, needs approximately 0.5 liters of water to process a written assignment to the chatbot. The longer this assignment or question is, the more power and water chatgpt uses to come to an answer. That is precisely the reason why it is better not to be too nice against chatgpt, because the chatbot then needs even more energy.

Higher energy consumption

Many users of chatgpt ask experienced assignments or questions, for example by adding ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to the text. That is often well intended, but also has a disadvantage. Chatgpt must process these extra words, so that even more water and electricity is used for ‘nice’ assignments. Openai also sees that in the costs, the processing of these friendly words costs the company tens of millions of dollars in energy costs.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAi, has now indicated that on X (formerly Twitter). He has not shared precise figures, but it is clear that each word ensures higher energy consumption in chatgpt. Suppose that every Dutch user enters ‘very much thanks’ after every assignment, then that ensures a lot of more electricity and water consumption at OpenAI. So don’t be too nice for chatgpt, because that is worse for the environment.

Short assignments in Chatgpt

Instead, it is advisable to enter shorter questions or assignments at Chatgpt. That way you keep the energy consumption of the chatbot as low as possible. It is not necessary to be very nice against chatgpt, although that can influence the tone of the conversation. So keep it for business and short, because the chatbot will then also do that with the answers. This way you limit the power and water consumption of chatgpt.

Incidentally, it is wise not to use Chatgpt too much, because the impact on the environment is great. This is especially true for generating images, which consumes much more energy than the processing of written text. In addition, pay attention to which information you share with the chatbot, because it is best to keep some data private. Read here which data you should never share with chatgpt (or deep chat!