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Sam Altman's remarks on PC memory draw response from Elon Musk

Altman said personal computers hold memory that data centres need; Musk said people deserve their own RAM.

By idly intel

2 min read

AI-assisted
Written by idly intel with AI help from several outlets' reporting, and checked before it goes live. How idly works
Image: Digit

Key facts

Story
  • Sam Altman said personal computers hold RAM that sits idle, which he called quite terrible for global supply.
  • Altman said the memory is used only about 5% of the time and could serve data centres.
  • Elon Musk responded on X, writing that people deserve to have their RAM too.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has said it is wasteful for personal computers to hold large amounts of memory, known as DRAM, when supply is limited. Tesla and X owner Elon Musk publicly disagreed on Sunday, saying people deserve to keep their own RAM.

Altman made the remarks in a podcast interview with John Collison, host of the YouTube show Cheeky Pint. He said that from a global point of view, it is quite terrible for everyone to have a share of the world's limited DRAM supply sitting unused. He said personal memory is often idle and used only about 5% of the time. He argued that the memory could be put to better use in data centres.

Musk's reply

Musk posted on X on 1 November: "The people deserve to have their RAM too!" He shared a meme that showed a scene from the film Inglourious Basterds, with text asking whether Altman was withholding DRAM from the cloud. Musk also replied with a laughing emoji and joked that he uses 64GB of RAM to play RollerCoaster Tycoon. When another user called Altman's view terrible, Musk replied, "seriously".

The comments drew mixed reactions online, with some users backing Altman and others siding with Musk. The two men have clashed publicly before.

Rising memory costs

The debate comes as memory prices have risen. Coverage of the remarks noted that higher costs are affecting the prices of smartphones, PCs and gaming consoles. Altman's comments were tied to the need to maximise resource use in data centres to ease current shortages.

It is not yet clear whether either man plans to say more on the issue. Neither OpenAI nor Musk's companies have publicly announced any change to memory supply or pricing in response.

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Sources: Times of India, Digit

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