Sam Altman Defends RAM Remarks, Says He Wants More Memory

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on November 4 that his remarks about personal computer memory had been taken out of context, after criticism of his argument that scarce DRAM could be used more efficiently in cloud data centers. He said he wants consumers to have as much memory as they want and has long supported increasing production. Altman also briefly changed his display name on X to “Ram Altman” after a user suggested it. He replied to another user that he wanted them to have “so much RAM” and added, “let’s build more.” By Wednesday evening UTC, his profile showed his usual name again. The dispute followed an interview published October 29 on the Cheeky Pint podcast, hosted by John Collison. Discussing constrained supplies of memory, Altman said it was “quite terrible” for limited DRAM to sit in personal computers that were being used about five percent of the time. He argued that cloud systems could achieve maximum utilization when supply was constrained. Altman’s November 4 post said he wants people to be able to put as much memory as they choose in their computers. He described it as “fucking annoying” that his earlier comments had been taken out of context and...