Does adding ‘please’, ‘thank you’ to ChatGPT prompts really waste energy?

The effect of a few extra words is negligible compared with the energy required to run data centres, writes Richard Morris

Cut the words “please” and “thank you” from your next ChatGPT query and, if you believe some of the talk online, you might think you are helping save the planet.

The idea sounds plausible because AI systems process text incrementally: longer prompts require slightly more computation and, therefore, use more energy. OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman has acknowledged it all adds to operating costs at the scale of billions of prompts.

Read the full story on Times2.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.