Most parents, whether highly educated or not, often tell their children that ‘good values do not cost anything.’ But recently Zen-ji taught me that ‘the earth probably has to pay the price of using these polite words.’ Wondering what this means? So read further. I learned this lesson the hard way. Standing in a public place, I helped a Genji young man in paying the auto fare. He did not have change so I gave it because the auto driver did not have digital facility. After making the payment the young man did not even say ‘Thank you’ and went away. To make him listen, I said in a slightly louder voice to my friend, ‘Look, today’s generation has forgotten even basic etiquette. Couldn’t he even say thank you? The young man immediately turned and returned and said, ‘Thank you uncle.’ It’s not a matter of intention. Gradually, we are getting into the habit of not saying ‘Thank you’ or ‘Please’, because in reality I had forgotten that I am not talking to an AI but to a human being. When I said, ‘Sorry, I don’t understand’ he gave an interesting explanation. She said that her generation was finding it difficult to give up the habits that parents had spent years instilling in them. He smiled and said, ‘Your generation has successfully taught us to say ‘please’ even when asking our pet dog for food. If the household helper gives you a glass of water, say ‘thank you’ to him also. But now the same habits are carrying us with us in ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI chatbots. But every additional word means more processing, which means more power consumption and a bigger impact on the environment. Surprisingly, he had a point. A recent report by the United Nations has also expressed the same concern. That said, personally, the impact of adding ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ to an AI prompt is minor. But when repeated across billions of AI interactions every day, the environmental impact becomes significant. The report, based on ChatGPT usage data, estimates that about 1.8 gigawatt-hours of electricity could be saved annually if simply removing ‘please’ from the prompt. There is no public data yet on how much power AI companies spend processing questions or how many prompts start with ‘please’. However, the United Nations report estimates that a typical ChatGPAT request consumes about 0.42 watt-hours of power, which is enough to light a 10-watt LED bulb for about two and a half minutes. If seen on a global scale, this scale is shocking. ChatGPT alone processes an estimated more than 2.5 billion prompts every day. If we add to this the requests for Gemini, Cloud, Copilot and other AI systems, the number becomes much larger. In such a situation, even very small savings on each prompt together can be very beneficial. The story takes another interesting turn here. A survey of 1,000 people in the US and UK by TechRadar found that 71% of British users are polite with AI chatbots. Whereas among Americans this figure was 67%. When asked why they show courtesy to machines that neither appreciate nor expect it, many joke that they are preparing for a future ‘robot uprising’. This debate went mainstream when Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was asked on social media how much loss his company suffered due to users repeatedly writing ‘please’ and ‘thank you’? His memorable response was, ‘Who knows, millions of dollars might have been spent in a better place.’ The bottom line is that even if our children sometimes forget the etiquette we worked hard to teach, don’t worry. They may be adapting themselves to the world of AI. And maybe someday they will also create small polite words, which will save both electricity and the earth.
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N. Raghuraman’s Column: Why are children refusing to say ‘thank you’ and ‘please’?
