Sam Altman argues that scarce DRAM should be used efficiently in the cloud, questioning local AI setups with memory sitting idle most of the time. Widespread AI adoption and the growth of data centers have sparked many discussions about memory costs and shortages, which drive price increases.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman recently said in a new interview that personal computers using DRAM are terrible when you consider how the cloud could use it.
Sam Altman Criticizes Idle PC RAM Amid Supply Limits
On Cheeky Pint, Altman explains why open-source AI models don’t eliminate the need for data centers. He went on to criticize the world’s limited supply of RAM in personal PCs, which is used “five percent of the time.”
A lot of people want local inference. Somehow, they assume that the problem is solved now because we are going to have open-source models, we’re going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we’re not going to need all the stuff in the data center.
But from a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time.
You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply constrained environment. Somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that.
Altman also stated in the interview that he would rather have “1 trillion AIs of slightly superhuman intelligence join society than one AI of 1 trillion IQ join society.”
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I'm Robert DeFelice. I spent years covering pro-wrestling industry for outlets such as Fightful. After years in wrestling journalism, I’ve transitioned to video games, another passion of mine.
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