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”
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
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!
Never felt so proud to have a Local LLM in my router, yes my router of all things… my router which is an old and downgraded Mac Mini I had lying around.
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.
I bet he owns a car that gets less than 5% usage.
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.
Having billionaires is a terrible allocation of scarce resources, don’t you find?
I bet he had literally never touched a bus.
CEO of Pizza Hut says making pizzas at home is a terrible allocation of resources.
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.
Shovel seller vehemently against you building your own shovel
McDonald’s can probably make hamburgers more efficiently than everyone can at home, but I’m not eating that shit any more than I’m giving Sam Altman my money or data.
Oh damn! Now there’s an analogy!
McDonald’s does but its still more expensive than making hamburgers at home, why?
Because profit motive is an inefficiency.
Profit motive is also a misallocation of limited resources.
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
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.
But even then I’d rather rent capacity from a hyperscaler than pay him.
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.
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.
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/
But Sam, local inference is what would prevent our data from being used by creepy advertisers.
And who made those resources scarce, Sam? WHO MADE THEM SCARCE???
also screw you for trying to make the answer to ‘How should those resources be allocated?’ be ‘In the way that best enriches me personally’.
It kind of blows my mind how our society is set up to give the most power to the worst people.
I think it has to be with the way all the media channels ( controlled by the rich in power) essential brainwash people into not acting. Money and capitalism slowly corrupted the process of democracy and will see after Nov 3 if there is away to hold the rich in check.
Off with his head!
This is the only answer
Don’t fucking talk to me about scare resources, billionaire.
Sam Altman is an example of a terrible allocation of resources. Think of how much oxygen and dihydrogen monoxide he consumes? And for what? He just needlessly produces carbon dioxide in record amounts. The elementary particles that make up the sack of biotic matter that calls itself Samuel would be better suited for other applications. Agriculture comes to mind.
