AI Kingpin Sam Altman Thinks You Shouldn't Own a Computer with RAM at Home

Sam Altman thinks the RAM sitting in your laptop is a bad use of a scarce resource. According to the OpenAI CEO, “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.” Tom’s Hardware reports that Altman made the case for centralizing computer memory in data centers, rather than personal computers, during an interview over beers with the YouTube channel Cheeky Pint. About 29 minutes in, he turned to local inference, the practice of running open-source AI models directly on a personal computer instead of through a cloud service. Watch the full interview here: His argument: data centers get far more value out of DRAM, the memory chips used for short-term data storage and processing, than individual computers do. “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 percent of the time,” he said. He framed it as a supply and demand problem. “You want maximum utilization in the cloud if you’re trying to deal with this very supply-constrained environment,” Altman said. “And somehow many people’s intuition is the opposite of that.” It’s a notable position given where it comes from. OpenAI’s business runs largely on closed-source models that live in data centers, even though the company has also released some open-source models people can run locally. Altman is, in effect, arguing for the infrastructure his own company depends on most. Altman clearly believes that all computer resources should be at his beck and call. The conversation covered a lot of other ground too: recent vulnerabilities found in PHP, the practice of sandboxing AI models during training, and OpenAI’s research into mathematics. At one point the pair even talked about GPT-6 Luna, a hypothetical future OpenAI model. The DRAM comments add to a string of recent remarks from Altman about what AI systems actually cost in resources. He has previously claimed that 38,000 ChatGPT queries use roughly as much water as it takes to grow a single almond, and that data centers use no more water than an ordinary office building. Breitbart News previously reported that RAM prices continue to surge as a global shortage worsens: Technology hardware manufacturers including Apple and HP are facing mounting challenges as soaring memory and storage component prices create what industry analysts are calling an unprecedented crisis for device makers. The shortage has transformed memory chip producers into some of the market’s strongest performers while simultaneously threatening the profitability of their customer companies. Supply constraints have driven prices to levels that are forcing hardware companies into difficult strategic decisions about how to maintain profitability while remaining competitive in consumer markets. AI data centers and the components like RAM that power them are becoming central to the economy and political races around the country. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his New York Times bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world. Read more at Tom’s Hardware here. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.