Omitting terms of politeness such as “please” and “thank you” when conversing with a chatbot can result in immense power savings, according to a UN report on data centres’ use of resources such as power, water and land.
The study from the Institute for Water, Environment and Health under the United Nations University, the UN’s academic arm, found that conversing in a “concise” way caused ChatGPT’s token output to decrease by 30 percent.
This could save 87 GWh to 98 GWh per year of power consumption, or about the residential power used by 760,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, the study said.
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Resource consumption
