OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes it is “terrible” for people to have RAM in their computers rather than in a data center, as the memory shortage driven by the AI boom continues to push costs higher.
In an interview with YouTuber Cheeky Pint, Altman discussed the global compute supply challenges facing the AI industry at present. When the conversation inevitably turned to memory, Altman argued that the “invisible hand” of the market is failing, likely because not every DRAM wafer is being routed directly into a data center to power these AI models.
Altman said: “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 maybe 5% of the time. Like, you want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply constrained environment. And somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that.”
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 – Photos
It kind of makes sense from Altman’s perspective. It’s in OpenAI’s best interest to get as many hyperscaler data centers online to make its huge AI models as fast as possible. But, while Altman seems to believe that everyone is buying memory just to run local AI models, RAM is needed for nearly every kind of consumer electronics product, which is why every piece of gaming hardware has risen in price this year.
Just this month, used PS5 Pros skyrocketed in price to $1,399, after the console got an official price increase in March due to the RAM shortage. Meanwhile, the RTX 5080 just disappeared off of Nvidia’s marketplace, weeks after the RTX 5090 was all but discontinued.
For Altman, though, who believes cloud-based AI models are the future of computing, it’s likely he sees all of these consumer shortages as a way to ensure that more memory gets funneled to AI companies to stuff it into data centers. And, according to Samsung’s latest earnings call, that’s exactly what’s happening, and is why the RAM situation isn’t going to get any better next year.
Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images.
Has the RAM crisis stopped you from upgrading or buying a PC?
Jackie Thomas is the Senior Tech Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She’s been covering gaming hardware for more than a decade for IGN, TechRadar, Gizmodo, PC Gamer and more. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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