I slightly have trouble believing that Mr “Stop wasting tokens by saying please to LLMs” Altman is not considering how his models can be optimized. I suppose the real question is how accurate are the utilization numbers in the article.

I stopped paying attention to any specific thing Sam Altman says a while ago. I've seen too many examples of interviews or off the cuff interactions that make me think very little of him personally.

For example, I could see him saying not to waste tokens on "please" simply because he thinks that is a stupid way to use the LLM. I.e. a judgement on anyone that would say please, not a concern over token use in his data centers.

But can that really be the case? It takes a long time to train and tune the models, any small, even low % digit of squeezing more implies much faster iteration.

Until investors specifically incentivize speed or cost for the next iteration I wouldn't expect them to optimize for efficiency.

Right now it seems investment is primarily based on vibes, media hype, and total spend on hardware and infrastructure.