Sam Altman has questioned how personal computers use scarce memory. The OpenAI chief executive argued that cloud data centres could use it more consistently than home machines running artificial intelligence (AI) occasionally. Speaking to Stripe co-founder John Collison on the Cheeky Pint podcast, he challenged the assumption that locally run AI models would reduce the need for large computing facilities.
Why people still want AI on their own computers
The discussion then turned to local inference, which means running an AI model on a person’s own computer instead of a remote server. DRAM, or dynamic random-access memory, supplies the working memory those computers need to run applications. Altman argued that shared cloud servers could keep scarce memory occupied longer by serving different customers throughout the day. His five-per-cent figure was presented without supporting measurements in the quoted passage. Altman was discussing local AI workloads, rather than gaming computers specifically. However, a personal computer’s memory also supports browsing, spreadsheets, games and other apps. Time spent running AI alone does not capture its overall usefulness.