It is not always a good idea to be kind or well educated. Thanks to the chatgpt, or any other Ia that makes us particularly satisfied, spends energy – the one used by AI to answer us. Forget good education: the planet thanks you.
OpenAi, a chatgpt company, returned to the center of the technological debate for an unexpected reason: the economic cost of Digital courtesy.
A simple expression like “thanks” or “please “ It may have an impact, even minimal, on the energy consumption of its systems – multiplied by the millions of times it has to do so.
The controversy was triggered by a post of the OpenAi CEO, Sam Altmanwhich played on the social network X on How much does it cost to the company be educated with your users.
“Tens of millions of well spent dollars. You never know, ”in X/Twitter, opening the door to multiple interpretations – in particular what Altman would say to“ never know ”.
The exact value of the courtesy
Apart from Altman’s cheerful tone, the truth is that adding words of courtesy to a chatgpt conversation means Use more computational resources. Each additional term translates into new tokenswhich are the minimum units that the model needs to process an order, explains the
According to calculations made by the based on current processing rates of the GPT-3.5 turbo, the cost is 0.0013 euros for 1,000 tokens input and 0.002 euros for 1,000 tokens output.
Thus, the complimentary expressions with which I was responding to our kindness can cost as little as 0.0000015 euros per interaction. Even so, applied to Millions of daily usersthe total value of energy expenditure is significant.
Based on techspot estimates, the use of educated sentences can cost about 350 euros per day, the equivalent of about 130 thousand euros per year. Although the amount is not irrelevant, it is far from the “tens of millions” mentioned by Altman, whose phrase cannot be taken as a literal calculation.
Does it make sense to be educated with an AI?
In fact, the set of operations carried out by OpenAi generates energy costs much higher: .
According to data from the electricity sector, keeping active the servers that feed the model can cost up to 125 million euros per year Only in electricity. This value includes all interactions, not just educated ones.
The most plausible interpretation of Altman’s comment is symbolic: In an increasingly automated world, maintain formalityEven with machines, it should not be seen as a waste of resources. On the contrary, it can be a form of Preserve positive habits in digital communication.
“You never know“Altman himself noted in his publication. Perhaps this daily gesture of respect, insignificant in terms of cost but valuable in terms of meaning, is remembered on the day virtual assistants They are more than simple software – and they are.
