During a recent podcast appearance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made everyone mad by explaining that it was “terrible” that people wanted to have RAM in their own computers. Instead, he suggested, the limited supply of memory should be used in data centers powering AI services and tools. People didn’t like those comments, and now Altman is claiming that’s not what he meant at all.
On November 3, right in the middle of a massive blue wave that swept across the country during election night, Altman replied with “I LOL’d’ to a joke image featuring RAM sticks leading up to a box trap. In response, someone joked he should rename himself to Ram Altman on Twitter, which he agreed to do, but not because he wants to consume all the memory in the world for his own data centers. Instead, it’s because he wants everyone to know that he really wants them all to have their own RAM. And he’s not happy that people allegedly took his comments out of context to paint him as some RAM-hoarding bad guy.
“I actually do want the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers,” said Ram Altman on Twitter. “And it is fucking annoying that this was taken out of context. I have been arguing for the world to ramp up memory production for a long time.”
Let’s go back to Altman’s original quote from last week. Here it is in case you forgot:
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. And somehow everyone’s—many people’s intuition is the opposite of that.
Hmmm, the quote above really does make it seem like Altman isn’t a fan of people having RAM in their computers, as he and other tech giants struggle to build data centers and buy up memory. Though, to be fair, Altman’s original comment does mention limited supply being a factor.
Though, hey, I wonder why RAM is so limited right now? Oh right, it’s because AI hyperscalers and big tech have been buying up all the memory they can get their hands on, making it harder for companies like Valve and Nintendo to build new hardware while driving up costs for everyone. So yeah, I bet Altman wants memory production to ramp up, but I don’t think it’s because he wants the PlayStation 6 to be more affordable.
