Newsletter
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that using the globally limited DRAM on home computers, for only about 5% of the time, is "quite糟糕."
- Elon Musk used the meme of Nazi officer Hans Landa from the movie "Inglorious Basterds" to mock this statement on X, with a caption saying that people are "taking down DRAM from the cloud."
- This confrontation is the latest dispute between the two co-founders of OpenAI. In May this year, a jury dismissed a $150 billion lawsuit filed by Musk against OpenAI.
Elon Musk mocks OpenAI, the CEO, who once stated that the limited computer memory in the world would be more valuable if it were used in AI data centers rather than in people's home computers.
Altman made the above remarks during an interview with YouTube channel Cheeky Pint. At that time, he was discussing the shortage of memory and other components caused by the AI craze.
“Many people want to perform local inference, and for some reason, they think the problem is already solved because we will have open-source models,” said Altman, referring to running the AI model on users’ own hardware. “But from the perspective of global resource allocation, it’s actually quite bad to let everyone put a large portion of the globally limited supply of DRAM in their computers, using it only 5% of the time.”
"If you want to cope with an environment where supply is extremely limited, you need to achieve the highest utilization rate in the cloud," he added. "For some reason, many people's intuition is exactly the opposite."
On Sunday, Musk responded on X by posting a meme that featured Christoph Waltz portraying the Nazi officer Hans Landa. The caption read, "Are you trying to drag DRAM down from the clouds?" Musk also added beside the picture, "People should also have their own memories!"
In this interview, Altman attributed the shortage to the caution of memory manufacturers. He said that for many years, a DRAM manufacturer would “invest $20 billion in capital expenditures but only earn $19 billion in return,” while those companies that nearly went bankrupt in previous cycles due to overbuilding of factories are now expanding production very slowly, even though they could potentially make huge profits.
Altman indicates that he hopes for a decrease in prices across energy, chips, and other aspects of the supply chain. "I would be very unhappy if prices did not fall," he said, adding that for prices to decrease, supply must increase.
This mockery is the latest installment in a long-standing feud between the two individuals. Musk co-founded OpenAI with others in 2015 and later left in 2018.
Musk sued OpenAI and Altman in 2024, accusing them of deviating from the organization's original non-profit mission. In May of this year, a federal jury in California dismissed the $150 billion lawsuit, finding that OpenAI, Altman, and President Greg Brockman were not liable on any of the charges. Lawyers for OpenAI argued that the lawsuit was partly motivated by competition, as Musk launched a competitor, AI, in 2023.
