OpenAI boss Sam Altman has addressed the backlash over comments he made in a recent interview, where he said he thought it was “terrible” for people to have RAM in their PCs rather than a data center.
Speaking to YouTuber Cheeky Pint, Altman said: “From a global allocation perspective, actually, it’s quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer, and being used 5% of the time. Like, you want maximum utilization 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.”
The comments were widely ridiculed, with many suggesting that, whether he intended it or not, Altman sounded like he wanted to take away personal ownership of memory and force society to use resources for the benefit of AI companies such as his. Social media was flooded with posts, images, and videos of people slamming Altman for the suggestion, promising to protect their memory from any who might try to claim it. Even tech rival Elon Musk joined the backlash with a meme of his own.
The people deserve to have their RAM too! https://t.co/q6dwauALw4
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2026
Now, in a series of posts on social media, Altman expressed frustration at the online response, insisted his comments had been taken out of context, and even joked about the situation, renaming his X / Twitter name to ‘Ram Altman’ at the suggestion of a follower.
Altman said he actually wants the world to have “tons of memory,” and for people “to put as much as they want in their computers.” He added that it was “f***ing annoying” that this was “taken out of context.”
“I have been arguing for the world to ramp up memory production for a long time,” he continued.
@HarshithLucky3 i lol’d
— Ram Altman (@sama) November 4, 2026
Here, Altman isn’t denying that he believes RAM would be better served in data centers, rather that there is enough RAM to go around. “I want you to have so much RAM,” Altman said in another reply. “Let’s build more.”
The response to Altman’s response was, predictably, further memes and dunks, with many, particularly within the PC gaming community, continuing to hit out at the tech billionaire’s views.
Altman had initially taken to X / Twitter to issue a statement that some are taking as a response to the Democrats’ decisive victory over Trump’s Republicans during yesterday’s U.S. midterm elections. The Democrats have now taken control of U.S. Congress, which perhaps signals a change in approach the regulation of AI, which up to this point has been pretty much nonexistent.
“People should always be in control of the future,” Altman tweeted. “OpenAI is against the notion that it would be acceptable for people to be relegated to a role of doing things that ‘AI systems think makes sense to reward in humans.’
“People should not cede control of the future to superintelligence, and that requirement should ultimately constrain AI progress.”
Data centers and the potential impact on jobs and humanity’s very existence from AI is a key issue for voters. Meanwhile, the AI boom has led to a scarcity of memory to power it, which in turn has caused graphics cards, video game consoles, and PC components to skyrocket in price. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have all raised the prices of their consoles as a result of the ‘RAMpocalypse,’ while the RTX 5080 just disappeared off of Nvidia’s marketplace, weeks after the RTX 5090 was all but discontinued.
Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images.
Wesley is IGN’s Managing Editor. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
