Sam Altman has a new name on X. Say hi to Ram Altman.
Last week on Cheeky Pint, Altman told John Collison it's "quite terrible" that so much of the world's limited DRAM sits inside personal computers, idle most of the day, when data centers could keep it busy around the clock. That's a solid argument if you run data centers. It's a worse one if you're the person who owns the computer.
PC builders did not take it well. The memes wrote themselves. Then on Nov 4, someone replied asking him to change his name to Ram Altman. He said OK, and then he actually did it.
He did push back a little. He said the clip was taken out of context, that he wants everyone to have tons of memory, and that the world should just build more of it.
Fair enough. But the AI data centers he's talking about, OpenAI's included, are the ones buying up the world's memory. Until new factories come online, your next laptop and his data centers are fighting over the same chips.
Get stories like this in your inbox every week. Subscribe to The Week in Perspective.