Re:RAM Altman: Linux Script Emails Sam Altman Daily How Much...
by Brian_K_White on Sunday November 08, 2026 @05:21PM
(#50418030)
This falls apart because of the simple fact that the people who had to contribute to create the pooled resource do not get to say how the pooled resource gets used.
This argument that only considers the one positive dimension of centralization and pooling is never valid.
Re:RAM Altman: Linux Script Emails Sam Altman Daily How Much...
by usef- on Sunday November 08, 2026 @05:32PM
(#50418136)
What model are you suggesting that gives them more access/control?
Currently AI providers are hyper competitive and almost all of the world has access to it quite cheaply. If people had to buy hardware for local inference, it would only be a tiny percentage of the world's affluent tech enthusiasts with access to AI, wouldn't it?
We're currently managing the shortage with a hybrid model, so enthusiasts can still buy (expensive) individual systems and the broader shared hardware goes to many, many providers. OpenAI is something like 15% of data center power in the US I think? That's a lot but we still have choice.
Imagine if we temporarily had a shortage of cars: your city only had 20% of what it needed. It would be accurate to say "in this global shortage, new cars are more efficiently used by groups/taxis/uber than sitting idle in a individuals home". Group drivers allow more individuals in the city to have access to vehicle transport.
There simply isn't enough ram in the world for every individual to do local inference right now: one person having a 512GB VRAM system means others don't. Data centers can batch the processing and serve many at once.
(That's also not to say individuals shouldn't have it! I think they should. You can buy a mac right now. But the price is a signal that only the most dedicated will buy it)