2Oct 30 1:00 PM · 8d ago · 5 posts · 6 comments · 4 sources · development 2 of 8
Large accounts (@pubity, @charlieINTEL, @MorePerfectUS) posted the quote with the fuller context about DRAM being 'used 5% of the time,' generating tens of thousands of likes and thousands of comments within hours.
tomshardware.com
“It’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAMs sitting in their own computer, and being used 5% of the time.”
Sam Altman
Sam AltmanOpenAI CEOOpenAIAI company led by AltmanCheeky PintYouTube channel that conducted the interviewMike MasnickTechdirt founder and author of the analysis piece
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What people said 7 voices · verbatim
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes people owning RAM is wasteful, and that it belongs in data centers instead. "From a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everyone have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer."
Weirdly, underutilization of hardware was never a problem before. In fact, wastefulness is so ingrained in programming culture that the previous hype - blockchain - was about an explicit race over who could waste the most computing power on nonsensical calculations.Also, I'd be very surprised if the current rush to build datacenters everywhere is…
Two statements can be true and he stated one of them. Sam is not wrong.1. Local inference can cause a large under-utilization of resources from users that do not run local inference hardware at capacity over the hardwares lifespan. This is under-utilization and under-utilization is not optimal from an economics perspective.2. The concentration of…
He's right in a such a narrow space on this particular matter that it's just a perfect example of what's wrong with a lot of things lately.OpenAI triggered this ordeal with its order of 900K DRAM wafers per month on october 2025, making everyone panic because it was around 40% of the world production at the time.We all know that memory providers…
"Local inference can cause a large under-utilization of resources" ... did he mean the resources that users themselves have fully paid-for themselves?Not to mention, I bet users will be open to "rent" their hardware for proper utilization, provided he can pay for it.... real question is, will he?
Few people will argue with the logic of whether it is technically accurate ( assuming actual deployment will be optimal, because that is hardly a given ). It is just amusingly self-serving. It is almost as if McD got to decide you can only eat there.
Altman: You are welcome to invest a little bit of your fortune in making major software developers write more efficient code that stops wasting our RAM. Start with internet browsers and the Windows 11 app that wastes one gigabyte showing the weather.
Sam Altman OpenAI CEOOpenAI AI company led by AltmanCheeky Pint YouTube channel that conducted the interview
Mike Masnick Techdirt founder and author of the analysis piece