Sam Altman says DRAM capacity should go to data centers, not personal computers

> By the same line of thinking, his SF home…

Isn't the view that people having extra homes used 5% of the time a very well-known and common criticism, and there has even been legislation enacted in a number of places to discourage or penalize such homes?

(For SF, it appears:

- Tax rates for >1 homes are higher under the Homeowners' Exemption

- There was also an 'Empty Homes Tax' but it was struck down by the court in Eric and Andrew Debbane v. San Francisco)

> Also he has 2 kidneys and 2 lungs, while he could get by with just 1 of each, and there are people badly needing them.

Is that supposed to be an example of hypocrisy? Or why did you specifically type that up in your comment? Regardless, are people required to not be hypocrites in any other way for it to be acceptable for them to say something else is badly inefficient? Actually, I am not even sure any of your comment is an example of hypocrisy, unless you're saying that someone can't say a completely different thing is badly inefficient, unless that person is personally efficient in (all?) other unrelated dimensions as well (for example, RAM, while being inefficient in terms of kidneys, lungs, and homes)?

Feels like the whole industry of technology has been driving this direction for a while, removing ownership and replacing it with making everyone rent from them.

Techno Communism... did i get that right?

Yeah, "isn't your car sitting idle like 22 hours a day?"

Bathrooms are even more inefficient, btw. How many hours a day do you really use a bathroom? And some people even have more than one just for convenience.

Even with the context, it's still a bad statement to make considering how the over-investment in AI data centers and DRAM price fixing by memory makers has made the price of RAM prohibitivly expensive for average people. Not everyone wants RAM to run local models, they just want to play video games or have an affordable PC for work or entertainment, and we can't do that because people like Sam Altman wants everyone paying Open AI to do the inference. If everyone could run their own local models then the value proposition of Open AI would dramatically decrease, so his statement is really self-serving rather than altruistic.

* What happens when the price of renting it from a few handful of corporations is suddenly jacked up because Sam wants a new yacht?

* What happens when these services arbitrarily restrict it's usage based on what they deem as unacceptable?

I don't know who Dara is, but they should probably put down that bucket of paint thinner and stop huffing it for a moment.

And who caused the supply crunch? Very deceitful framing. Worse than stating plainly what he means like the headlines have done.

He could very easily solve the shortage by not buying up the entire supply. Further, the frontier labs could even coordinate in favor of consumers and agree to limit their compute purchases.

Don't know who Dara is but anyone who "implores" me to watch a video can get lost.

> his memory is not as good as it was before

yes that’s what he’s saying, if consumers had less memory, his would be better.

> After a few seconds, popup asking me to allow ads on the site. Ya, sure.

"No, sorry, I can't allow more ads 'cause I'm running out of memory. If you want me to allow ads you'll have to give me more memory first."

After stealing all personal work from the internet one must say

> This is what you have cheered for.

Not me. I been ridiculed and vilified for arguing against exactly this outcome. :shrug: Apparently I'm just jealous of people like Sam Altman and Elon Musk, or so I've been told.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMsUcCYNKqY&t=1765s

That's close, but basic capitalism is where those who were able to extract the most value from _previous_ resources are able to acquire current and future resources using the value they previously acquired. Managed capitalism is one of the forms where resources eventually get allocated more efficiently. In practice, anyway (philosophically, systems are better than in reality).

Capitalism has nothing to do with efficiency. Some resources are most effiently distributed through nonprivitized means.

That’s only true about material or dollars; it’s less obviously true about, eg, ownership of a company they founded.

Maybe the right meme would be “Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask” with someone shopping RAM and a picture of Sam Altman?

It's right if you only focus on the resource allocation aspect. (Which would be a bit hypocritical as other comments here are mentioning).

But the elephant in the room is the question of who would control all that RAM and set or change the rules about which usages are allowed, for what price and which aren't allowed.

This against the backdrop of Anthropic just now deciding to block using Claude for reverse-engineering video games.

Or to go with your meme, the person you hate didn't just make a great point, they would also get to control what you do with your computer. Would you be fine with that?

To extend this line of thought ..

Whats better if all the RAM, CPU and storage of phones went to DCs. People are more productive without phones. They work instead of consuming content. The tens of thousands of hours lost (opportunity cost), even at a minimum wage is >$1 million over a lifetime.

I kind of feel this way about condominiums vs self standing houses, and I think the benefits and problems are comparable.

In the condo I used to own, I shared 5 out 6 faces of the box with neighbors. Cheapest electricity bills I ever had because you're mutually insulating your neighbors.

However, my HOA fees were more than that savings. The chairman noticed we had a lot of money in the reserves and pushed for a vote to do a multimillion dollar renovation. Popularity contest for things I don't value and HOA fees go up. Want to make a change or need to make a repair, need to get approval from the board.

Anyway, I'm sure the parallels are obvious with a little imagination, but I prefer a standalone house.

I would have agreed if your RAM were equivalent to their RAM.

If one could use their RAM in a way that was actually private and without leading to them accumulating huge power it would be different matter.

A modern OS will use any “spare” RAM as a page/disk cache. Without that, performance will become intolerable sooner, thus driving consumer demand for newer machines and more RAM chips. And a newer model is unlikely to have less RAM in the spec than the older model it replaces…

I agree with people having excess memory on their computers.

What I don’t like is the idea of rationing it and making it more and more expensive when you promise an era of abundance.

This would be true to first order if people wanted the work being done in the new crop of ram hungry data centers to be done at all. In that case it would come down to a complicated nest of relative efficiencies, incentives, issues of govt corruption etc. However, the individuals with ram largely despise the work done in datacenters so its moot.

We should make sure we are allocating travel to the people who enjoy it most also. More efficient you see.

Oh wait, much of the basis of the modern economy is letting individuals make decisions for themselves.

You'll own nothing and Sam Altman will be happy.

They just need more electron crapware from you guys. Problem solved.

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