A news summary based solely on the provided article body: Being polite to artificial intelligence models by using words like "please" and "thank you" incurs an environmental cost. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, responded to a question about electricity costs from courteous prompts, stating it amounts to "tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know." A United Nations University study found that reducing word use by 30% when using AI could lower its energy usage by 25%, saving the same amount of electricity used in a year by 700,000 people in Africa. AI accounts for 20% of data center energy, projected to increase to 40% by 2030, when data centers are predicted to use more power than all but five countries. A Future survey found 67% of U.S. AI users are polite to it, and a Pew Research Center survey found 54% of smart speaker owners say "please." Sherry Turkle of MIT noted that courtesy is shown because the tech mimics personhood. Politeness can also improve AI performance by up to 30%, according to Botify's A.J. Ghergich. Additionally, 18% of people surveyed by Future said they are polite in case of an AI revolt. Data centers globally used 448 trillion watt-hours of electricity in 2025, more than all but 10 countries.