ChatGPT has rapidly become one of the most widely used tools in the world.
Few tech companies have managed to become synonymous with their industries, such as Google with search engines or Apple with smartphones, but OpenAI has succeeded in doing so with arguably the most important technology in modern times: artificial intelligence.
The Interface of AI
ChatGPT has cemented itself as the go-to generative AI, and as of 2025, it remains the most-used AI chatbot on the market, beating out other top Silicon Valley brands such as Google and Microsoft.
Its widespread adoption in both everyday life and the private sector has created a new market for the best prompts and phrases to get the most out of the AI. LinkedIn and X, formerly Twitter, are now full of content creators and professionals alike, all promising 10 easy tips to get better responses from ChatGPT.
One of the most popular tactics to encourage the AI isn’t based on the right language or the formatting of the prompt but on how polite the user is.
Saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT emerged primarily as a form of social etiquette, combined with a superstition that one day, an AI overlord might be able to know if you were nice to it or not.
In a 2024 survey on the official ChatGPT subreddit, many users said they simply wanted to be polite to the bot, with one user writing, “It is basically wasted, but hey, it’s nice to be nice.”
“I’m always nice just in case the AIs take over the world, and I hope they remember that I was always nice to AI,” another person wrote.
“Of course I’m polite,” a commenter added. “It has nothing to do with my irrational fear of AI taking over. I’m not at all trying to get on AI’s good side. That’d be just silly … right?”
Being Polite Pays Off
There is evidence to suggest that saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT can provide better responses to queries.
In a memo on the creation of Microsoft‘s Copilot AI, design team director Kurtis Beavers said being polite set an agenda that generative AIs mimic, meaning if you’re polite and helpful, the response will be helpful too.
“Using polite language sets a tone for the response,” Beavers told WorkLab. The Microsoft site also reported, “Using basic etiquette when interacting with AI, Beavers tells WorkLab, helps generate respectful, collaborative outputs.”
It added that politeness “not only ensures you get the same graciousness in return, but it also improves the AI’s responsiveness and performance.”
The numbers back up this philosophy. In 2024, research from Japan’s Waseda University across three different languages and various generative AIs found that being rude to AIs led to a 30 percent drop in performance, while being polite reduced errors and gave responses that provided more information from different sources.
“This phenomenon suggests that LLMs [large language models] not only reflect human behavior but are also influenced by language, particularly in different cultural contexts,” the report found.
“Our findings highlight the need to factor in politeness for cross-cultural natural language processing and LLM usage,” it continued.
The Cost of Courtesy
Users might not think that “please” and “thank you” could add much to the processing costs of ChatGPT. After all, they’re only three words.
But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says differently. In response to a social media user asking how much had been spent on electricity costs on processing “please” and “thank you,” Altman estimated that it was “tens of millions of dollars well spent—you never know.”
While the comment was made in jest, the figure shows how resource-intensive even the smallest additional factor can be when it comes to LLMs.
In March, a report from the Electric Power Research Institute estimated that asking ChatGPT a question costs about 10 times the electricity that asking Google the same question would demand.
The advances in data center development that began in the 2020s has led to a drastic increase in CO2 emissions from Big Tech, with Google alone reporting that its emissions had risen by 30 percent in the past five years.
ChatGPT’s numbers are no better, with OpenAI producing 8.4 tons of CO2 a year and requiring 700,000 liters of freshwater to train its GPT-3 model.
These environmental demands and growing complications mean that watchdogs are already sounding the alarm about the future development and adoption of ChatGPT and similar AIs.
Andrea Miotti, the founder and executive director of ControlAI, a nonprofit of AI security experts, told Newsweek: “Nobel Prize winners, hundreds of top AI scientists, and even the CEOs of the leading AI companies themselves have warned that AI poses an extinction threat to humanity. AI companies are pushing on in spite of this danger and putting everyone at risk.”
Who Benefits?
While AI is affecting some industries more rapidly than others, almost every part of the private sector will engage with it in one form or another.
At the beginning of 2025, a study from McKinsey found that 92 percent of companies planned to increase their AI investments, and LLMs were the biggest focus of these expansions.
As a result, many companies are looking for the groups of people most likely to learn how to get the most out of AI.
Mantas Lukauskas, the AI tech lead at Hostinger Global, told Newsweek that the most recent generations to enter the job market would be best placed to learn new tricks with AI.
“Younger generations, particularly Gen Z and millennials, are the most willing to embrace AI in the workplace,” Lukauskas said.
He continued: “In fast-paced, tech-forward environments like startups or creative agencies, AI is seen as a productivity booster and idea generator. In contrast, older generations and more traditional workplaces, such as government, education, or legacy industries, tend to be more skeptical.
“Concerns range from AI replacing jobs to mistrust in automated decision-making. The opportunity lies in framing AI as a collaborative tool that enhances rather than replaces human expertise.”
The post Please and Thank You: What Does It Cost to Be Polite to ChatGPT? appeared first on Newsweek.
