OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on a recent podcast that “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, and be used 5% of the time.”
Altman was talking about people running AI models locally rather than relying on data centers, which allow RAM usage to be maxed out in this “very supply-constrained environment.” What many heard and responded to—PC gamers in particular—was resentment directed at those of us who don’t run AI companies, but would still like to have and use our own personal computers, as a treat.
In an exchange on X this week, Altman said that his remark was “taken out of context” and that he actually wants “the world to have tons of memory and people to put as much as they want in their computers.”
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“I have been arguing for the world to ramp up memory production for a long time,” Altman said.
Altman’s argument for increased memory production is no consolation to the tech enthusiasts and gamers who’ve been priced out of new hardware by his company and the rest of the AI industry. What we’ve been calling the RAMpocalypse hasn’t just affected high-end PCs, either: In the lead-up to GTA 6‘s console launch, a PlayStation Pro is $900, if you can even find one.
The bitter reaction to Altman’s comment also comes from concerns that big tech companies want to push gamers off of local hardware so that it can rent us cloud computing. For an audience that’s already disgruntled about the erosion of game ownership, the thought of losing control over our own hardware is not palatable, however much cloud streaming services like Nvidia‘s GeForce Now have improved.
That concern is now coupled with the generative AI-heavy future that tech leaders are pushing. If generative AI is best delivered as a cloud service, and the games industry is going to increasingly incorporate generative AI into games, it follows that we will be pushed toward cloud computing.
Nvidia DLSS pioneer Bryan Catanzaro made a comment to that effect at a GDC panel I attended earlier this year. Speaking about hypothetical games built with AI “world models,” Catanzaro noted that we probably won’t run those models locally, because “AI is fundamentally much more efficient in the cloud.”