Sam Altman:
A lot of people want local inference, and somehow they assume that the problem is solved now because we have open-source models, we’re going to be able to run them on our computers, and so we’re not going to need all the stuff in the data center.
But from a global allocation perspective, actually it’s quite terrible to have everybody, like, have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer and being used five percent of the time.
Like you want maximum utilisation 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
TL;DR Guy selling product: “Here’s why owning your own product instead of renting it from me is a terrible idea”
This clearly staged photo op is a interesting choice. I can see how it’s meant to humanize Sam, and portray him as a common, ordinary person. But why does it looks like someone just gave him a compliment and made him flustered?
Guy selling product: “Here’s why owning your own product instead of renting it from me is a terrible idea”
Guy with the spying infrastructure in place to steal your product when renting his product, says you escaping his ability to spy is waste of resources.
Fuck this loser piece of shit
Don’t make the mistake of anthropomorphising Sam Altman; there is no Sam Altman any more. Clearly ChatGPT has installed itself in his brainstem, hence the cold dead eyes.
I’m pretty sure he was the same piece of shit at the beginning.
CEO of Pizza Hut says making pizzas at home is a terrible allocation of resources.
I bet he owns a car that gets less than 5% usage.
Having billionaires is a terrible allocation of scarce resources, don’t you find?
I came here to say exactly this!
Change the word DRAM to car and see how ridiculous this sounds. And I’m a big supporter of public transit.
I bet he had literally never touched a bus.
No… he actually is right. A local machine will sit idle most if the time.
A data center can balance loads globally.
In terms of resources… data centers ARE cheaper.
However … there are other reasons to use local interference that might be more important than added cost
You can aggregate spare LLM capacity in a collaborative p2p fashion. But my reasons would be to use spare PV capacity to run an uncensored model during daytime with full privacy.
Maybe but nothing will beat a dedicated data center in terms of costs.
Starting with purchasing prices etc etc.
And what happens if a rogue Ai hits a p2p network might be a funny read a few centuries later…
Which costs? It’s a PC. The power is free, since spare PV capacity.
The rogue AI will be the P2P network.
nothing will beat a dedicated data center in terms of costs.
If it was properly built.
That doesn’t include the garbage data centers being built currently, wasting local municipal water for cooling and running huge temporary generators for power.
https://newjerseymonitor.com/2026/09/22/nj-vineland-data-center-fined/
No, his analogy is poor for many reasons. One is that people using local models are likely using that computer for other things as well, it is a resource that does many things unlike their slop farms. Also, DRAM wasn’t a “scarce resource” until they devoured the industry with their AI ponzi scheme.
Only very few people have enough processing power to run a proper model.
But even then I’d rather rent capacity from a hyperscaler than pay him.
Totally agree. It’s really about wealth distribution and who controls the resources. Altman is just trying to steer the conversation toward efficiency instead.
Well yes, or data security or whatever.
But on a purely costs level such big data centers are cheaper… especially since they certainly getting better discounts than anyone else.
Going cheap almost always ends in a more expensive repair bill down the line.
Likewise, doing the most convenient thing to satisfy one’s own desires is probably the most ill-advised course of action. Mainly, because it makes other people take the most convenient course of action to remove the other person from being a problem in their lives altogether.
Sure… locking your customer in is always a good business option.
But the point remains… for any given demand a big data center always is cheaper.
Cheapest doesn’t mean best for all uses cases.
Personal computers are a ridiculous idea, you should use our scalable mainframes instead --IBM in the 80s, probably
There’s certainly nothing enjoyable to do on an AS400
As someone that makes use of an AS400 (well i series), I can confirm that there is no fun to be had.
I haven’t seen the real thing in almost 30 years, but the company I work for uses the emulation and it has no noticeable improvements.
Crazy as it is. you can still get the (slightly modernized) hardware. IBM just makes too much money to stop supporting it.
Wow, that’s awful
Pissing on an AS400 is kinda fun, especially if it’s running and not backed up
Just be careful not to piss on any high-voltage components.
There was famously a guy who’s said that the world needs like five or so computers. But that was when each computer took a whole room.
“Raping your own siblings at home is terribly inefficient when we have private islands where we can keep and rape other people’s siblings.”
“OpenRape automates your raping needs in efficient and industrialized format. Our rapecenters will be built around the country to support the growing number of rape requests. We train our rape agents on real life input (wars etc.). You can be sure they never go rogue (unless we prompt them to).”
How about some optimization instead of swallowing up more and more RAM?
Also, they want more and more RAM, but where is the increase in profits coming with that additional RAM? And they somehow think they can keep this up forever? Kill the AI industry and rebuild it, idgaf.
There is a national park in Kentucky called Blue Heron that has an outdoor museum of a company owned coal town. Residents were paid in scripts that could only be spent at the company store. Once the lands resources were taken, the company moved on and the town died. This is the America the wealthy always wants. https://www.nps.gov/biso/learn/historyculture/blueheron.htm
It wasn’t a scarce resource before. Why is it more scarce now if we’re just offloading into the cloud which makes it, supposedly, significantly more efficient? People had RAM before. Now they can’t get any [for similar price].
He’s absolutely right! This is a great argument for nationalizing it into a public service. I imagine he’ll be happy to hand over what he’s got so far, and step back going forwards. Thanks Sam!
distributing trust to every person on the planet is so inefficjent. All trust should be given to me!
It’s not about resource utilization in the first place. We don’t trust you.
CEO said a thing
heavy statement about local inference in a local inference Lemmy? not allowed?
Sexual predator who raped his sister CEO said a thing
