Sam Altman wants your PC's RAM in data centers

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the RAM sitting in your PC would be better off in a data center.

Speaking on the Cheeky Pint podcast, Altman pushed back on the idea that open-source models running at home will reduce the need for AI data centers. “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 5% of the time,” he said. “You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment.”

The comments land in the middle of an ongoing memory shortage. Samsung and SK Hynix have signed long-term deals with cloud operators and projects like OpenAI’s Stargate, and the Verge reports those deals have reserved much of the world’s RAM output for the next few years. That demand has pushed up the price of RAM, laptops, phones and gaming hardware. Shacknews points to PlayStation’s recent price increase and the $1,300 ROG Xbox handheld as examples.

(Sources: Tom’s Hardware, The Verge, Shacknews)