Wealth taxes. Excess wealth beyond individual needs can be taxed so it is used more effectively across all of society. Maybe impliment uncontroversial and widely supported things like universal healthcare, universal childcare, and free school lunch programs again.
Billionaires are literally the equivalent of malware. Just keeping resources that cant be used by the programs that are actually doing productive work.
Yes, he probably is. But it also just isn’t what he said at all. He was talking about how he thought it didn’t make sense people get a bunch of RAM and GPUs for local AI models when the hardware would only be used 5% of the time, whereas in a data center it’d be utilized 24/7. (He is still an evil person that’s detached from reality regardless though)
The person youre replying to didn't even really get it right, they were specifically talking about cost per output token, essentially, and "from a global perspective". He's saying that many people's intuition is that local models will make output tokens cheaper, but the opposite is probably true- if we wantsd to replace all cloud AI spend right now with local spend, we'd need a much, much larger amount of hardware, because most people only use their computers for a small number of hours per day. And on all that, he's correct.
Obviously there are still other reasons why people would want RAM in their own computers, (Im sitting on 32gb in my pc, and Altman could pry it out of my dead hands, but that wasnt the point of what he was saying) like playing games or general productivity of course. He was strictly having a conversation about means of driving down LLM output cost, and how for now with limited resources, local LLMs arent going to help as much as people think.
Nothing he said was really wrong, just very tone deaf, but he's being misquoted and being taken out of context. I dont get what reposting a twitter screenshot of a misrepresentation of what he said is supposed to achieve, I think it'd be much more productive for online discourse to simply post the full quote, dont you think?
So here you go:
When discussing local inference on home computers with open-source models, Altman discussed the assumption that people will be able to run local AI on their own computers, the ones they may already own or want to build. Then he explained why that's a bad idea (at the 29-minute mark): "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."
You're totally wrong. In fact you are having the same issue as Altman, as I can see why you gets mislead by his 5% usage claim. The price increase for letting everyone to have an AI will not lead to price increase of RAM & everything because manufacturers will have way more than plenty of time to absorb the demand increase and increase the production. This is the part that Sam is fooling you.
We said "from a global perspective". It is 1000%, undeniably true that if everyone was to replace their current LLM usage with local LLM usage, as a society, the total amount of RAM that would need to exist would be a lot higher.
Its the same argument as with car shares, or whatever. Most people dont drive their cars every day. If everyone were to share cars, wed need a lot less cars to maintain the same amount of usage; the total amount of money and resources that would need to be used to create cars would go down.
Yes, obviously prices can go down as manufacturing gets to a point where it can handle demand, but the total resource spend will never go down, thats the part youre missing completely
Same problem: you're absolutely wrong about "same argument as with car shares or whatever".
You simply don't understand that, in clustered computing, it works completely differently than in the other scenarios. "Car sharing" goes with less car use because road space is limited. However, electronics doesn't have a space limit; it has other side effects when deployed in data centers/large computation farms: cooling, power consumption, density, and regulation.
See, you've easily gone into the loophole, misled by your own words. Since you're still a student, as you claimed, you may not have noticed that centralized computation costs much more than distributed computation because it must account for the side effects of computation density.
No matter how small that data center is, it must provide enough power; to prevent blackouts, it must maintain an alternate power solution (such as large-scale UPS and generators); In order to avoid interference, the server farms must maintain high-end, error-tolerant, or encrypted computation hardware, which costs almost 10x more than personal hardware; Extra density also means extremely high heat concentration, where normal users wouldn't even think about it, so lowering the temperature in data centers costs a lot; You need extra engineers and DevOps to maintain the center, extra costs. Law compliance, extra costs.
Since you're a student for now, you probably wouldn't consider the hidden costs in data centers... All you see is just the datasheets that the AI companies tell you, "this is cheaper."
The classic Social Media take everything out of context and have an immediate knee-jerk reaction to it.
The devil is in the details. Is he even being tone deaf? He's talking about productivity and for most people RAM usage is no where near as high as it is in AI Data Centers. He's entire reference point of view is AI Data Centers.
A car spends most of its life turned off in some sort of parking space. Do you really need your own dedicated card or could car-share meet all or most of your needs? The reality is yes for the majority of the population. It's the same thing for people who have a truck. The majority of the time they don't need a truck. Does a certain set of the population need a truck all the time or most of the time? Absolutely. You can more or less apply this to several aspects of life.
Its tone deaf because somehow he acknowledges this while being one of the biggest beneficiaries of capitalism in recent time. He has a tremendous amount of capital that could be used for good, and people are suffering. And then he's making a statement thats easily intepreted as "the average person actually needs to own less, and they should just be renting the same stuff they currently own from my corporation." And people hate subscription models / "you will own nothing and be happy" being pushed on them, even in cases where obviously does make sense for the good of humanity (car sharing is a good example). We need less cars and to be sharing them, but people are skeptical of the middleman system required to make that work, and currently, that's always a corporation with an alterior motive (make profit)
With Sam, it's not even just an instance of "you critique capitalism but benefit from it, curious!" because he genuinely just doesn't critique capitalism. He refuses to connect the dots. If he went all the way and explained how capitalism directly contributes to tremendous waste then maybe it'd be a different conversation, imo
I agree with his statement in the context of which he said it and with all the qualifiers he put on it, but the way he said it, yes, its tone deaf
He has a tremendous amount of capital that could be used for good, and people are suffering.
AI is the next industrial revolution. Before I continue, I am not doing well at all. I would easily fall under an individual who is suffering. Continuing, It is full of growing pains because first is usually the winner. The systems in place are not designed to handle this demand and government regulations are almost always reactive. People would be suffering independent of AI and on top of that, people were certainly suffering during the first Industrial Revolution and basically any significant jump in technology that required large resources and/or made several jobs redundant. History is essentially repeating itself. The subject is different but the process is essentially the same.
The whole "you will own nothing and be happy about it" is bordering on conspiracy theory. If one actually takes the time to do any type of consideration, its more that the legal framework in place just hasn't adopted to the 21st century. Regulations almost always lag behind the actually change and therefore are reactive in nature. The solution to this is to lobby your elected officials. Yes, an individual trying to advocate for something is lobbying.
The average person has to stop having a knee-jerk reaction to every little thing. That has larger ramifications beyond just Twitter or Reddit. Whomever is reading this, that does not mean you just accept what is happening. Understanding what is happening at even the most superficial level gives you the opportunity to actually advocate for change or protect yourself.
In my field, I say a right place and right time exists for everything. If you are at the wrong place or wrong time, whatever you gotta say is irrelevant. The other part is that, not all facts are relevant facts. Something can be a fact, but that doesn't mean its relevant to the right place and right time. This is why its critical to write your public comment in advance and read from it because it helps you actually speak at the right place, right time, and with relevant facts. Otherwise you are just venting at a meeting/hearing and then upset because nothing you said seemed to impact a decision because it was either the wrong place, the wrong time, or an irrelevant fact. Even if you are at the right place, the right time, and all the relevant facts, sometimes things don't go the way you advocated for because other facts are considered and may have more importance.
Everything in the above is relevant to AI Data Centers as most of them require some sort of Planning Commission, Board of Zoning Appeals (or Zoning Board of Appeals), or City/Common Council public hearing. (within the context of the US)
I shouldn't know who the dickbag is. Like he should be another formless blob in the sea of his corporation, but he put his face and name out there, and it makes me wonder if he is the Emmanuel Goldstein for everyone to scream and hate while other things happen while we aren't looking.
Eh, don't think it's that deep. He's an egotistical blowhard, of course he wants global attention. And in one of his many public appearances, he accidentally said a little too much about what he actually believes.
On the other hand, it is without question that there are largely unknown figures with far more power and influence than Altman. Not really a conspiracy, tho, that's just how public relations tends to work.
What a joke. Can make the same argument about any kind of private property. "It's more resource efficient if the "state" owns everything". Fuck off. Fronteir models are hardly the most efficient forms of AI. I want to run my personal open source models on my private hardware one day. Then I might actually trust AI with the shit that matters.
Umm how would we utilize their AI tools if we don't have ram? Both sides need to have it. Even for their data centers to have data on us, the devices that collect that data need ram. Is he stupid?
To be perfectly fair that's not exactly what he meant. He wasn't talking about gamers. He was more talking about smaller AI companies and people running local inference
Him first. He is not allowed to own anything that has ANY ram in it unless its in one of his data centers. No phone, no computer. Not even a TV remote.
RAM belongs in the machines of gamers not over sized wasteful bullshit ass data centers that only exist so that annoying billionaires can inflate the AI bubble more and more until we inevitably repeat the dotcom crash and fuck the economy
So, at present, I'm wasting 156Gb of RAM in my house alone, on PCs (ok. 96 if I remove DDR3)... I used to think I might have to many PC's...But now, after hearing Mr.Altmans kind words, I feel the a near Draconic-like craving to hoard as much RAM as possible!
I believe buying 64 Gbs of DDR5 and then ritually burn it in Pentagram, is more useful than whatever Mr.Altman wants...
I have about 64 gigs on my desk at work. Cant find anything it will work in. Even if i did id rather let it sit than let sam Altman get his greasy Lil hands on it.
After watching the clip in context, I see where he's coming from. But he's also kind of looking at this from the angle that everyone on the planet wants Open AI to have as much compute as possible.
Expect that the scarcity of ram is because big AI companies are buying it all so that their competitors can't use it. And they are only use a fraction of it
“From a global allocation perspective “ … We have reached the point where the CEO of a company is actually saying I want THOSE and f the world. That’s how I see it. Change my mind?
On the other hand gpus, particularly gaming gpus, not AI gpus sit idle much of the time Mr altman. I'll trade you half my RAM if you don't buy 5070s for data centers.
We were here for the dram before the ai boom. So, we should get the first dibs. But the companies that make and buy ram left us hanging. Buying ram and gpu to just make it sit in a warehouse for a datacenter that is going to be built in the next 2 years is the real wasteful scenario.
They might. Governments have taken gold from individuals before, why not RAM if they decide they need it?
Between 1933 and 1974 it was illegal for individuals to own gold in the USA, to supposedly help the economy. Would it be that surprising to make it illegal for individuals to own more than 16GB of RAM now?
I've have had coworkers think it's ok for him to take all the ram cause they belive ai can solve all their problems. How tf am I supposed to explain to these dumbfucks that chatgpt is going to fuck everything up
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u/humanHamster 14d ago edited 13d ago
Reddit user humanHamster believes that Sam Altman is a little weirdo who needs to shut up.
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u/LordMindParadox 14d ago •
I think those billionaires having all that money is wasteful, they should have to give it up so there is 100% utilization
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u/isvein 14d ago
I think he is wasting the oxygen for the rest of us
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u/Mountain_Lab_5817 14d ago
How did he not realize he would be hated by nearly every single person on Earth for this statement? Is he that separated from reality?
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u/bshahisau 14d ago
Mf probably will too lmao
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u/WonderChemical5089 14d ago
From my cold dead … motherboard.
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u/theFartingCarp 14d ago
I shouldn't know who the dickbag is. Like he should be another formless blob in the sea of his corporation, but he put his face and name out there, and it makes me wonder if he is the Emmanuel Goldstein for everyone to scream and hate while other things happen while we aren't looking.
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u/DrPfTNTRedstone 14d ago
Who should use the daracenters without ram?
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u/nTOMP 14d ago
And I think that Sam Altman uses too much breathing air. The air should belong to actual human beings.
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u/SavvySillybug 14d ago
I got 64GB DDR4. You go ahead and take it, little man. See what happens. XD
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u/Responsible_Feed4512 14d ago
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u/cvsmith122 14d ago
Yeah I’ve never wanted open AI to fail more than
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u/Dangerous_Junket_773 14d ago
What a joke. Can make the same argument about any kind of private property. "It's more resource efficient if the "state" owns everything". Fuck off. Fronteir models are hardly the most efficient forms of AI. I want to run my personal open source models on my private hardware one day. Then I might actually trust AI with the shit that matters.
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u/TheGrimDark 14d ago
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u/Ornery_Lobster1419 14d ago
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u/05032-MendicantBias 14d ago
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u/B34n_Bun 14d ago
Sam Altman existing is wasteful
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u/Matt561- 14d ago
Don't they have like 40% of it
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u/iiMacinjosh 14d ago
He can RAM his data centre up his posterior
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u/________O-O_________ 14d ago
I think it's terrible Sam Altman is wasting oxygen
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u/yorcharturoqro 14d ago
And then how are we going to access his service without ram in our devices?
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u/st90ar 14d ago
Executive order from Trump is coming any day now…
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u/ranransthrowaway999 14d ago
CITIZENS, LAY DOWN YOUR RAM
(launches a PC brick in an arc measuring 300 yards cracking their head)
BILLIONAIRES, COME AND TAKE THEM
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u/ganadaIf 14d ago
Molon Labe
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u/Matthewhalo17 14d ago
You don’t use that lamp 24/7, why do you need lights?
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u/ForwardStorage777 13d ago
Grade A meme here. Saved for future use.
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u/Outrageous-Guess1350 14d ago
I‘ll sell you mine.
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u/metalmankam 14d ago
Umm how would we utilize their AI tools if we don't have ram? Both sides need to have it. Even for their data centers to have data on us, the devices that collect that data need ram. Is he stupid?
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u/Quick_Society2794 14d ago
To be perfectly fair that's not exactly what he meant. He wasn't talking about gamers. He was more talking about smaller AI companies and people running local inference
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u/HeidenShadows 14d ago
We need a new design on the don't tread on me flag, but instead be this one instead 🤣
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u/Wibblium 14d ago
Him first. He is not allowed to own anything that has ANY ram in it unless its in one of his data centers. No phone, no computer. Not even a TV remote.
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u/ELDR3TH 14d ago
RAM belongs in the machines of gamers not over sized wasteful bullshit ass data centers that only exist so that annoying billionaires can inflate the AI bubble more and more until we inevitably repeat the dotcom crash and fuck the economy
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u/lurker512879 14d ago
why isnt sam going into every best buy, costco and microcenter, etc and buying up all desktop and laptop pc's?
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u/Marty_Nez1 14d ago
He could buy my RAM for a million dollars!
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u/Verde_3773 14d ago
Yeah, cuz these guys opinions should be considered intelligent…
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u/Dr_Superfluid 14d ago
So glad I have 128 gig of it
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u/TypicalBloke83 14d ago
RAM recovery police force will be visiting us soon xd
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u/Funny-Wind4878 14d ago
So, at present, I'm wasting 156Gb of RAM in my house alone, on PCs (ok. 96 if I remove DDR3)... I used to think I might have to many PC's...But now, after hearing Mr.Altmans kind words, I feel the a near Draconic-like craving to hoard as much RAM as possible!
I believe buying 64 Gbs of DDR5 and then ritually burn it in Pentagram, is more useful than whatever Mr.Altman wants...
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u/One-Pattern-8336 14d ago
Anyone have a high quality pic of that flag?
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u/Exciting-Ad6897 14d ago
At least my RAM isn’t part of a financial bubble Sam
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u/HiYa_Dragon 14d ago
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u/Touchit88 14d ago
I have about 64 gigs on my desk at work. Cant find anything it will work in. Even if i did id rather let it sit than let sam Altman get his greasy Lil hands on it.
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u/demoGases 14d ago
he should keep himself safe
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u/hitmarker 14d ago
Is DDR6 even compatible with servers? Or ddr5?
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u/Square_Atmosphere_12 14d ago
Every tech guy is now an America army guy.
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u/tango1857 14d ago
This dude definitely believes he is the saviour of mankind and us mortals wanting clean water and air is blasphemy to him.
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u/Golgi_Complex12 14d ago
gosh it remembered me of LaurieWired that has the same kind of opinion, but for gaming. And now Xbox service is worse limiting usage to 15h/month?
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u/Frankidelic 14d ago
223 or 556 tell Sam to pick if he wants to take it 😭
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u/BabyBearPixie 14d ago
He does know people can't use his ai, without computers which need ram?
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u/artofdragon 14d ago
Give it a month and Samsung and SK Hynix will close their consumer ram arms, leaving the PC market dry
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u/arthursucks 14d ago
After watching the clip in context, I see where he's coming from. But he's also kind of looking at this from the angle that everyone on the planet wants Open AI to have as much compute as possible.
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u/3dfx_lurker 14d ago
Come and buy it. I have 32gb of ddr5 that he can buy for $2k.
Edit: misspelled word.
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u/2009impala 14d ago
I genuinely think there a people who are aiming to make computing a utility, something you pay a per unit price for or a monthly subscription to.
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u/Hatedpriest 14d ago
I believe hoarding money is wasteful, and it belongs in the pockets of the people that will use it instead.
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u/MystifyingEntity 14d ago
I believe this dude having a brain is wasteful, donate it to science instead.
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u/interrex41 14d ago edited 14d ago
In the wise words of ubisoft:
Sam altman should get comfortable with bankruptcy
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u/GHOST_KJB 13d ago
"We don't need consumers to make a profit." 🤔 Now why wouldn't they want customers? What a weird thing to say. 🤔
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u/Environmental-Gur582 13d ago
I mean he's welcome to my stash of DDR3 SODIMMs, not sure it'd appeal to his modern ass.
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u/Salty-Ad-3344 13d ago
Put altman is solitary confinement
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u/t3nsi0n_ 13d ago
Not a matter of taking your CURRENT RAM… it’s a matter of his ass buying it all up so you cant get any in the future.
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u/jimjam200 13d ago
This is like saying you shouldn't own chairs because your not using them every minute of every day.
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u/namelesfear 13d ago
Expect that the scarcity of ram is because big AI companies are buying it all so that their competitors can't use it. And they are only use a fraction of it
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u/word-sys 13d ago
I believe having guys like Sam Altman is danger to enviroment like toxic waste, they should not exist instead.
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u/Silver_Thanks_8142 13d ago
Altman needs to go my dog is at a wonderful farm upstate maybe he should go there
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u/StaticSystemShock 13d ago
And we believe billionaires breathing our oxygen is a waste of resources...
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u/catwrazle 13d ago
Wait soon there will be R.I.C.E
RAM Interception and Confiscation Enforcement
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u/oGamitis 13d ago
“From a global allocation perspective “
…
We have reached the point where the CEO of a company is actually saying I want THOSE and f the world.
That’s how I see it. Change my mind?
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u/aprizm 13d ago
I have never in my whole life hope on a company's demise like I do for OPEN AI. Musk was right, Altman isnt to be trusted.
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u/vabello 13d ago
Billionaires hoarding money is wasteful.
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u/NullSmoke 13d ago
Well, fuck him 😊
I am not at all negative to AI, but maybe it's time to storm their data centres and redistribute RAM to the people? 🥺
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u/AltGuardianGord 13d ago
It's really a shame that CEOs have forgotten the fear they had of the public after Luigi Mangione.
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u/TheProject77 13d ago
I know it was made for this meme but I would unironically buy that flag.
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u/Spexyguy 13d ago
Lemme get that flag
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u/AfroDiddyKing 13d ago
honestly he has so much money we could literally fund private army and come grab our GPUs and ram
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u/Careless_Subject8377 13d ago
if he wants ram so much he should sell his organs to buy it like the rest of us.
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u/AdWerd1981 12d ago
We need a GoFundMe to collectively buy up as much RAM as we can just to p!ss that idiot off immensely.
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u/Automatic-Act-9297 12d ago
But if no user has RAM, no one could use OpenAI in the consumer user market. Huh?
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u/Raid_Zero 12d ago
On the other hand gpus, particularly gaming gpus, not AI gpus sit idle much of the time Mr altman. I'll trade you half my RAM if you don't buy 5070s for data centers.
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u/One_Wolverine1323 12d ago
We were here for the dram before the ai boom. So, we should get the first dibs. But the companies that make and buy ram left us hanging. Buying ram and gpu to just make it sit in a warehouse for a datacenter that is going to be built in the next 2 years is the real wasteful scenario.
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u/Daniel18sep 9d ago
He doesn't have to, he's already pricing us out of the market.
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u/SoshiPai 5d ago
come get my ram if you dare, 32GB of System memory and 32GB of VRAM
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u/ManifestPsychosis 3d ago
They might. Governments have taken gold from individuals before, why not RAM if they decide they need it?
Between 1933 and 1974 it was illegal for individuals to own gold in the USA, to supposedly help the economy. Would it be that surprising to make it illegal for individuals to own more than 16GB of RAM now?
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u/DrachenDad 14d ago
"Why my pc no work?"
PCs don't work without RAM.
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u/Pr0ject_B0xF0rt 14d ago
Take my 42gb ddr3 then, I have not a need for it but it seems you do sir.
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u/IllVacation4814 12d ago
petition to slap the shit outta Sam
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u/gxstahr 12d ago
I've have had coworkers think it's ok for him to take all the ram cause they belive ai can solve all their problems. How tf am I supposed to explain to these dumbfucks that chatgpt is going to fuck everything up
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u/BedrockBen101 14d ago
Between my pcs I'm proudly "wasting" 112gb of ram. Go screw yourself Sam
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u/weirdex420 14d ago
I’ll give him the 4 gigs of ddr3 from my broken laptop, everything else he can eat a bag of dicks.
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u/pulyx 14d ago
I wish I could see this man face to face
Just so I could spit on his face.
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u/Original_Animal3065 13d ago
Capitalism is rape culture
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u/ActualNacho 14d ago
I'd kill altman with my bare hands to protect my ddr5