- Elon Musk mocks Sam Altman's recent claim that people shouldn't own RAM
- "The people deserve to have their RAM too!" Musk's meme on X says
- Altman has been keen to secure more memory for OpenAI recently
Elon Musk has mocked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman following the latter's declaration that owning a PC with RAM is 'quite terrible', as the components should be powering the next generation of AI data centers.
In his typically irreverent manner, Musk shared a meme on X, the social network he owns, showing a version of a scene from with a German WWII officer played by Christoph Waltz apparently hunting for people hiding sticks of DRAM.
"The people deserve to have their RAM too!" Musk's meme declares.
Stopped clock
Altman made his claim during an appearance on the YouTube channel Cheeky Pint, with his beliefs causing widespread condemnation and confusion across the industry.
"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."
Altman's comments come as consumers face rising prices for any kind of computing hardware as the demand for RAM and other components gets passed down.
In recent months, we've seen the likes of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warning of continued shortages and price rises, noting, "AI hardware will stay in short supply for the next 2 to 3 years", a trend he said was "driven by persistent constraints in the underlying tech supply chain."
Dell CEO Michael Dell has also voiced his belief that the memory shortage will get worse through 2027, and that these RAM woes are going to be prolonged for quite some time.
Top DRAM manufacturers Samsung and SK hynix have also warned that AI-driven memory shortages will last until 2027 and beyond, with their supplies rumored to be down to fewer than 10 days of memory inventory.
Interestingly, Altman reportedly recently met with about 50 senior Samsung executives in South Korea, as he looked to secure more hardware for OpenAI to expand its AI capacity.
But no matter what happens, one thing that (probably) won't happen is Altman breaking into your house to steal your PC's RAM...probably.
Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for over a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal. When he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, he can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.