Ram prices skyrocketed because a few turbotards with more money than god saw a text generation algorithm generate text and this collectively made them cream their pants.
No. RAM prices skyrocketed because the major manufacturers that supplied the consumer market shifted their production capacity toward AI data centers, creating a supply shortage in the consumer market. This effectively turned RAM into a high-demand commodity rather than the relatively accessible consumer product it once was.
RAM continues to be expensive because competing manufacturers have not stepped in to meaningfully increase supply for the consumer market. Instead, manufacturers are prioritizing the substantially more lucrative AI data center market, leaving consumers with fewer options and less competition for available supply.
Judging by the title of your post, I’m convinced you don’t understand what competition actually means in the context of economics. Competition isn’t simply the existence of multiple companies. It’s the willingness and ability of those companies to enter a market, increase supply, and compete for consumers by offering better prices.
Even though I agree with you, I think OP is saying the same thing but in a nutshell and with more emotion than logic. They’re not wrong but not correct because it’s not the full answer.
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, a billionaire, said he thinks it’s terrible for people have RAM. He said it in the context of being against local inference. It’s really not hard to see what they really think. They want to hoard all the RAM and make you rent it from them.
Ah that’s a didn’t perspective. I see what you’re saying now. Well done.
We live in a weird late stage capitalist situation where the producer sees the consumer as competition which is why we’re seeing the artificial scarcity and GPUs just sitting idle in warehouses.
Once again, you are misusing the word competition. Consumers aren’t producing RAM, adding supply to the market, or competing with another company for sales.
If these companies want to rent computing power to consumers while reserving the RAM supply for themselves, they are consolidating control over the market. That’s a supply-side market concentration issue, not competition between consumers and manufacturers.
Sam Altman, OpenAI, and other tech executives don’t view the consumer base as competition. They view consumers as potential customers for their computing services. They want to own the infrastructure and rent access to it. A consumer renting computing power from a company isn’t competing with that company.
You’re confusing two entirely different economic concepts. You’re wrong, and I’m not saying that to be mean. I’m simply pointing out an objective distinction in how competition works in economics.
normal don’t use that much RAM each but there’s billions of em
They definitely see personal computing as competition. They see people as potential market slaves.
And if scam altman wants my ram, he’s going to need to pay me $4k/gb
Goes up $1k every time I mention it
He can rent half my RAM at $10 per mb per hour.
Wanna utilize 32gb of my ram?
32 GB of my ram will cost you a cool $32,768 per hour.
Edit: sorry the grace period has ended and enshittification has begun. It’s now $15 per mb of ddr4 and $30 per mb of ddr5 (but it’s faster!)
Why use a linear increase when you could use an exponential increase?
I like logarithmic increases.
You know what, fair enough, I didn’t think big enough
1000^(# of times mentioned)
Which makes the current price $1000000000000/gb
? We’re bad at making ram and they found a way to use the sticks/factories, messing with demand. No conspiracy required?
