A developer creates a script that monitors your RAM usage and emails Altman about it
Inspired by Altman’s thoughts on unused RAM.
Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI in Berlin, Germany. Photo by Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty
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- Developer Iain Kay created Ram-Altman, a Linux script that emails Sam Altman about unused RAM.
- The script checks memory every five minutes and sends one daily email if more than 10% is free.
- The project mocks Altman’s claim that personal computer RAM is often wasted while AI demand rises.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
A developer created a script that would automatically send emails to OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, containing information about how much unused RAM is on their PC.
The project named Ram-Altman was created by developer Iain Kay and shared on GitHub.
The script monitors Linux computer memory usage every five minutes and then writes to Sam Altman once a day “to report the RAM he missed.”
The email to Altman would be sent if more than 10% of the PC’s RAM is available, indicating how much memory isn’t being used.
To keep “reports” interesting, the emails rotate eight subject lines, ten messages, and six sign-offs, “so the joke gets old at a carefully managed pace,” shared Kay on the GitHub page.
The page includes an example email sent to Altman with the subject line “You missed a spot.”
The email stated that 8.6 GB of RAM isn’t in a data center and that “it has no plans today,” and ended with “hoarding responsibly, a concerned RAM owner.”
Users who would like to run the script should keep in mind that it requires Linux to work. Windows users can use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), but macOS is not directly supported.
Once a user downloads the project, they can follow the installation instructions in the repository.
A user then needs to configure their email account so the script can send messages. They should then run the script to check how much unused RAM their device has. If enough RAM is available, the script then sends an automatic email to Sam Altman.
Too much unused RAM
The project is a response to Altman's observations that RAM is being wasted on regular computers, even as there’s major demand for it in AI development.
On an episode of the Cheeky Pint podcast, OpenAI’s CEO shared that “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 maybe 5% of the time.
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Given the timing, when rising RAM prices make it harder for users to upgrade their devices, Altman’s comment sparked backlash online.
Some users took Altman’s logic and gave examples of how it can be applied to him or other billionaires.
“Sam Altman owns multiple large homes. Now, a single person can only be in a single room at once, leading to very low utilization rates across his homes. I think it would be better to tear down his homes and replace them with high-density apartment buildings, that way the land has a much better utilization percentage,” wrote one user.
“Ram Altman” Is Now a Linux Script That Emails Sam Altman Daily to Report How Much Unused RAM Is in Your PC
by u/Turbostrider27 in pcgaming
“Can we get a report for all unused assets billionaires have? Maybe put it in real-world numbers, like how many schools are in the world and how many they could build with their unused assets,” added another Redditor.
“The first type of cyberbullying I support,” shared one user, hinting at the Ram Altman project.
