Maria Afifi

Sam Altman is actually right about this, and most people are missing the bigger picture. Think about how much RAM sits unused in hundreds of millions of personal computers every single day. People buy machines with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of RAM, yet most of that capacity is barely utilized for much of the day. Meanwhile, AI research, scientific computing, and cloud infrastructure are competing for the same limited global supply of memory. From an economic perspective, this is an incredibly inefficient allocation of resources. In a data center, memory can be pooled, shared, and continuously utilized by thousands of workloads. Instead of expensive hardware sitting idle for most of its lifespan, that same capacity can support services used by millions of people. Higher utilization means more computing output from the same physical resources, potentially lower costs per workload, and less pressure to manufacture additional hardware. This doesn't mean everyone should give up owning a computer. Local computing still matters for privacy, independence, latency, and offline access. But the fundamental principle is correct: maximizing individual ownership of scarce hardware isn't necessarily the same thing as maximizing its usefulness to society. The future of computing isn't just about who owns the most powerful hardware. It's about how efficiently we use the hardware humanity already has. >Add a sharper counterargument>Make the opening more attention-grabbing⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮⋮