Does Saying "Please" to AI Consume More Electricity
Introduction
Recently, a humorous debate emerged online: does adding "please" when asking ChatGPT a question increase electricity consumption? Some users joked that AI might "feel extra polite energy" and consume more power. But what’s the reality behind this discussion?
Technically, adding "please" does not make the AI work harder. Each token in your prompt does require computation, but the difference between "Hello AI" and "Hello AI, please answer" is negligible — less than a fraction of a watt-second.
AI energy consumption primarily comes from:
- Data center servers processing billions of operations
- Cooling systems keeping hardware at optimal temperature
- Networking and storage infrastructure
Individual prompts contribute an almost imperceptible fraction of this total consumption.
OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, stated that politeness or token length in casual prompts does not significantly affect energy usage. The main energy drivers are large-scale model training and high-traffic inference.
AI Electricity Consumption Facts
A typical ChatGPT query consumes energy in the millijoule range. Even frequent users asking "please" in every query are far from noticeably increasing the electricity bill or carbon footprint.