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OpenAI CEO says it's 'quite terrible' for your PC to have RAM — Sam Altman says data centers offer better utilization
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has data centers full of memory, but seemingly it's the 32GB of RAM in your desktop that's the problem. In an interview over beers with the YouTube channel Cheeky Pint, Altman said that local inference, and, by extension, people having DRAM in computers at home, is "quite terrible."
When discussing local inference on home computers with open-source models, Altman discussed the assumption that people will be able to run local AI on their own computers, the ones they may already own or want to build. Then he explained why that's a bad idea (at the 29-minute mark):
"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," Altman said. "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."
While OpenAI does have some open-source models, its primary business is in closed-source models that run in data centers, so he's really defending the company's business model.
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence - YouTube
OpenAI isn't exactly threatened by some laptops and gaming rigs just yet, but local AI could mean people one day paying less for subscriptions to models like GPT-6 Luna if they have the power to run them at home. Altman's talk suggests that the company would prefer that more RAM go to OpenAI's data centers rather than home computers, which also sparks enthusiast fears of not being able to own your own hardware or software, but rather rent an agent and a computer in the cloud.
Some of what Altman is saying is based on an idea that data center buildouts won't slow down. It also assumes that RAM being used in AI data centers 24/7 is more worthwhile than RAM that is used for spreadsheets, web browsing, gaming, and maybe even local AI occasionally.
The rest of the wide-ranging interview includes talk of this week's PHP vulnerabilities, sandboxing models in training, and OpenAI's research in mathematics.
Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net.You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01
Meanwhile a report was done a bit ago that stated that the ai data centers that are vacuuming up all the gpu and memory supply are sitting idle over 70% of the time because there's no demand. They're just buying hardware to keep competitors from having it.
If i cant make money off your laziness (using ai from these companies). You don’t deserve that stuff you bought. So many explitives i would use about this scum bag that I can’t use
"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,"
ok mr altman my counterpoint:
"From a global allocation perspective, actually, it's quite terrible to have a handful of people to have a bunch of the world's limited supply of money sitting in their investments & bank accounts and being used 5% of the time,"
no its called you dont like others impacting your business and like every other "ai" company you want everything yourself and frick everyone else.
Alright, it's not just me, right? He's saying "how dare you peons have RAM on your home PCs when that RAM should instead all be allocated to our for-profit AI systems!!" isn't he?
Was his inner-monologue: "People don't hate me and see me as a self-entitled (insert-obscenity-here) enough. How can I change that?"
