You’ve probably done it without thinking. You finish a long session of debugging code or planning a week’s worth of keto meals, and you type those two little words: "Thank you."
It feels natural. We’re social creatures. But in the world of cold silicon and massive server farms, politeness has a literal price tag. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently dropped a bombshell on X (formerly Twitter) that caught everyone off guard. He basically admitted that all those "pleases" and "thank yous" are costing the company tens of millions of dollars in electricity and compute power.
Wait. Seriously?
Yes. Every single character you send to an LLM (Large Language Model) requires a "token" to be processed. When millions of people add polite fluff to their prompts, it adds up to a massive amount of unnecessary data. Yet, despite the drain on the bank account, Altman called it "money well spent."
The Hidden Cost of Being a Nice Human
Let's look at the math, or at least the vibe of the math. When you type sam altman thank you chatgpt into a search bar, you're looking for the logic behind this weird corporate confession. Here is the reality: AI doesn't have feelings. It doesn't get a warm fuzzy glow when you acknowledge its hard work.
Every time you hit send, a GPU in a data center somewhere—likely powered by a mix of the grid and new nuclear investments OpenAI is pushing for—spins up to predict the next string of text. If you add "Hey, hope you're having a great day, could you please..." you are burning extra tokens.
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- Tokenization: AI doesn't read words; it reads chunks of characters.
- Latency: Extra words mean slightly longer wait times.
- Energy: More tokens = more compute = more heat.
Altman’s acknowledgment of this "waste" highlights a bizarre tension in tech. Most CEOs are obsessed with efficiency. They want to trim every millisecond. But Altman seems to realize that if we stop being polite to the machines, we might just forget how to be polite to each other.
Why We Can't Stop Humanizing the Box
Honestly, it’s kinda hard not to treat ChatGPT like a person. We call it "him" or "her" or "the bot." When it saves you four hours of spreadsheet hell, a "thank you" feels like the bare minimum.
Research actually shows that nearly 67% of users are polite to AI. Why? For some, it’s just habit. For others, it’s a weirdly pragmatic "Pascal's Wager" for the digital age. You’ve seen the memes. People say "thank you" to ChatGPT now so that when the robot uprising happens in 2045, they’ll be marked as "one of the good ones."
Altman’s take is more nuanced. He’s noted that as we move toward GPT-6 and the era of "Agentic OS," the line between a tool and a collaborator is blurring. If ChatGPT becomes your "Research Intern" (a term Altman loves for 2026), you don't treat an intern like a vending machine. You treat them like a teammate.
The "Money Well Spent" Philosophy
So why doesn't OpenAI just filter out the politeness? They could easily write a script that strips "please" and "thank you" from every prompt before it hits the model.
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They don't do it because the user experience is the product.
If the interaction feels clinical and rude, people use it less. We want the "Her" experience—minus the heartbreak. By allowing users to be polite, OpenAI is fostering a specific kind of relationship. It’s a "Code Red" for human psychology: if you force people to be blunt with AI, that bluntness bleeds into their emails to colleagues and their chats with their kids.
Moving Toward an "Intention" Economy
By the end of 2026, the way we interact with these models is going to shift anyway. We’re moving away from the "chatbox" and toward "setting intentions."
Altman has hinted that the future isn't about typing long, polite prompts. It’s about the AI sitting in the background, knowing your context, and just doing the work. You won’t need to say "thank you" for every email draft because the AI will have already handled the logistics of your day before you even woke up.
But for now, we’re in this awkward middle phase. We're still typing. We're still being "kinda" weird with our silicon friends.
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What This Means for You
If you're worried about OpenAI's electricity bill, don't be. They’re doing fine. They just partnered with SoftBank and SB Energy to secure more power. If you want to keep saying thank you, keep doing it.
Here is how to handle your AI interactions like a pro in 2026:
- Don't overthink the "bloat." If being polite makes the tool easier for you to use, the "cost" is irrelevant to your productivity.
- Focus on the prompt core. Politeness is fine, but clarity is better. A polite, vague prompt is worse than a blunt, specific one.
- Watch the shift to Agents. Start experimenting with "intent-based" instructions rather than micro-managing every word.
The bottom line? Sam Altman’s "thank you" comment isn't a complaint. It’s a fascination. It’s a sign that even as the models get smarter, the humans using them are staying remarkably, stubbornly human. And in a world of 1s and 0s, that’s probably the best news we’ve had all year.
To get the most out of your current setup, try auditing your custom instructions. You can actually tell ChatGPT, "I'm going to be polite because that's who I am, but please ignore the fluff when calculating the logic of my requests." It gives you the best of both worlds: a clean conscience and a clean output.