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can't the datacenters just use swap
Okay okay, what did I miss?
Sam Altman lamented in an interview where he was asked about the RAM supply shortages (that he is partly responsible for) that it's terribly inefficient for "a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM" to be sitting in people's personal computers and suggested it would be much more efficient to centralize it all in (his) data centers where it would be more fully utilized (charged by usage at a rate that he sets, of course).
Sounds like Sam Altman is a communist. But even under communism personal property is allowed.
This is by no means to agree with him, but it occurs to me that his position is but a matter of degree from the bloatware enthusiasts' mantra: "Unused RAM is wasted RAM!"
That sounds like all the old west capitalists who thought that every drop of water in a river that reached the ocean, every acre of unspoiled forest, every inch of prairie that was untilled, every ore filled mountain that wasn’t dug up, any piece of beautiful landscape that had coal left under it was a waste. Every valley should be filled with smoke stacks, every animal that’s not in a stock yard should be shot. Screw the song birds, you should be able to hear a steam whistle from anywhere in the country.
I’d rather ram hide than hide ram IYKWIM
If we assume Sam Dickhead Altman is arguing in good faith (he's not, but let's pretend), then he does have a point, it is "inefficient". I'd argue that this is hardly the most important factor. Much more important than raw efficiency is security, stability, privacy, ownership, and other less easily measured metrics.
So even at face value, he's still a dickhead.





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