Sam Altman has been making headlines for his claims that consumers don’t deserve DRAM because it is only utilized “5% of the time.” In his opinion, DRAM supplies should be prioritized for data centers where its utility can be maximized powering cloud environments. Altman’s perspective is like a utilitarian’s fantasy. Humanity’s endurance of short-term pain – by handing over every bit of DRAM we have – will lead to a morally right outcome in the form of a world powered by time-saving, efficiency-increasing, productivity-boosting AI. Sounds great if you’re the head of an AI company, but less so if you just want memory to be affordable again. But what the OpenAI head seems to forget is that the DRAM shortage is part of a crisis he had a hand in creating. When OpenAI’s Stargate datacenter buildout was announced in early 2025, it was predicted that the project would require 40% of the world’s global supply. Supply issues were compounded as leading producers of memory entered a production turndown just a few years before to help stabilize pricing. Will Sam Altman break into your house to steal your RAM? The good news is that there is little Sam Altman himself can do to take your RAM off you. One reddit user asked Google AI the question we’ve all been thinking: “Is Sam Altman going to break into my house and steal my RAM?” We’re safe… for now from r/ChatGPT
Google reassured the user with, “No, Sam Altman is not going to break into your house to physically steal your RAM.” So at least there’s that. But given how constrained the current memory supply is, there are a few ways that AI and other future tech could make the whole situation worse…