I think calling it a RAM shortage is a bit incorrect. It is not like we are running out of raw materials or something else in the supply chain is broken. It’s shitty AI companies buying RAM that is not existing yet with money they don’t have. Unfortunately there’s no good term for that, I guess.
It’s called Imaginary Economics.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
How often does this happen that we can claim this correlation? 🤔
It’s about to. The very nature of it, means you can only have a sample size of one.
And when do you predict this will occur? When should I have built my nuclear shelter so I know when to start building it?
Too late for that I’m afraid. It already happened. It just takes a while before the [citation needed] folks understand that past performance is not a guarantee for future success.
Lol sure, any time now, just one more year bro, just one more year and it will collapse bro, promise.
Maybe the usa will collapse a bit (because those people are often americans that don’t know there are other countries out there) but that’s another story.
I highly recommend staying ignorant honestly. It’s a much lighter burden to carry than seeing all the datapoints and seeing the collapse as a certainty. Have a good life, seriously.
When has this happened before?
[citation needed]
I’m not holding my breath.
We’ve been hearing about an AI crash practically since the hype train started.
It’s the biggest bubble seen to date. It has all the characteristics, and it will crash eventually.
Yes there is: it’s a Ponzi scheme (AI companies will fail when they get no new funds to pay off the stockholders)
Are they paying off stockholders?
They are creating staggering shortsighted profits, so yes, they are doing that. And of course ignoring what a bubble does in the long run.
Those who bail out only.
It’s a racket, plain and simple. There used to be laws against this sort if thing.
It’s a racket, plain and simple. There used to be laws against this sort if thing.
Keyword: used to
I hope that it was worth it, and that America is great again. Let me just check some news articles… Oh my
It is a shortage caused by artificial demand rise.
Unfortunately there’s no good term for that, I guess.
Market manipulation?
A mismatch between supply and demand is called a shortage. The source is irrelevant.
We have RAM supply shortage.
Now better? god…It’s shitty AI companies buying RAM
It’s greedy manufacturers selling it all to them in the first place and other market segments be damned.
I’m no AI fan but the manufactures aren’t angels either.The shovel makers and shovel sellers always get rich in a gold rush
If your boss offered you a raise for the same work, would you turn it down?
Not the same.
The money is fixed. You getting a raise means the money has to come from somewhere- which means the boss taking a pay cut or the customers paying more.
Still not the same, i don’t work for any of those manufacturers - and if i did i sure as hell wouldn’t care if their CEOs got a paycut to benefit the consumers. Won’t someone please pity the CEOs…
I’m referring to the relationship between someone offering you more money for the same work the difference of which gets passed on to consumers.
A few consumers are going to a business and offering more money for the same work. The consumer is the business’s boss just like your boss might offer you more money. You aren’t going to turn down the raise because it will hurt other consumers just like the business isn’t going to turn down the money even though it will cost other consumers more.
and if i did i sure as hell wouldn’t care if their CEOs got a paycut to benefit the consumers
I brought that up because that wasn’t going to happen. If you get a raise, your boss isn’t going to take a paycut to make it happen. The raise comes from the consumers.
The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn’t really exist to be put into GPUs that haven’t been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven’t been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn’t actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible.
😎
The price crash is going to be great. Such a massive yo-yo. Most of the AI companies will just completely eat shit out of it.
Yes and no. The hardware companies have already said that they’re not interested in expanding production. They know it’s a bubble, and don’t want expanded production now to cause a glut in the future when the inevitable pop happens. So prices may not actually drop, (even after the pop), because the companies still won’t be producing more hardware than they currently are.
My best guess is that we’ll have some dark data centers sitting around collecting dust, but the hardware they bought won’t actually flood the market and crash prices. If anything, since the US dollar’s value is essentially tied to Nvidia and OpenAI’s market share, a pop will only make the dollar less powerful and will counteract any potential drops in prices that may have otherwise happened. The companies will get a trillion dollar bailout when the pop happens, (because they’re too big to fail) then nothing will change about the current hardware prices.
All the ram being bought up is going to end up in the 2nd hand market as the hardware is all liquidated out. The prices will crash, and despite manufacturers not increasing their productions lines to build more ram, will still have to compete against themselves from the used market, meaning they won’t be able to keep trying to charge crazy high prices.
…except that PC sales will fall off a cliff, so they won’t have a market to sell to. Its not like you need a PC to access the internet anymore.
So prices may not actually drop, (even after the pop), because the companies still won’t be producing more hardware than they currently are.
There’s also the risk that they simply may not drop the price even after, because the customer base can bear that price, so it becomes the new normal.
On the bright side, at least the entire global economy isn’t ridiculously overextended on this delusional bubble.
Did you use ChatGPT to write this?
Going to be fucking hilarious when all the western companies get fucked by China taking over the market they don’t seem to care about.
Hmm I know China has a big push for AI as well, I wonder what their market is looking like.
Edit: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-much-ai-does-1-get-you-in-china Ah seems like their AI isn’t as big due to lack of access to western chips.
They’re wealthy but absolute fucking morons. The people who fall for the “they have money so they must be smart” are such gullible buffoons. CCP is much more competent than American oligarchs, running what could’ve been great with better policy into the ground.
It’s almost as if socialism makes for a better capitalistic system. It’s a lot better when the oligarchs fear the government rather than the government fearing the oligarchs.
I agree
AI is the last great bubble.
And it, like all bubbles, will pop.
You are already seeing the people in the know flee the field.
You see reports that every company that has adopted it has at best changed nothing, at worst lost money on it.
Outside of the psychotic linked in CEO bubble, literally no one wants AI. And every day its generating more and more hate due to its halucinations, mistakes, and bullshit.
Its garnering massive negative attention for its use, and for anyone stupid enough to adopt it at this point (cough intel cough)
Its a dying star, and people are frantically trying to harvest the last bits of warmth from it before going off in search of new horizons.
Don’t count on China. They are going to invade Taiwan next year and the global trade embargo will be a rounding error to the destruction of the tmsc factories during that war. Or they will capture the fabs and prohibit export to the US. Loose loose for us.
“China, a country that hasn’t invaded another country in 50 years, is going to invade this country” said the country that invades a country once a decade.
China a country that has been trying to unify Taiwan since the civil war they couldn’t quite finish.
When you live in the imperial core of one of the most militaristic nations in the history of the world, everything seems like a provocation.
Ironic considering much of the world was constantly in conflict prior to Pax Americana.
America has engaged in war the majority of the post world war 2 era. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, Iraq twice. And that’s not including all the proxy wars they’ve funded.
Don’t forget Africa!
Yes every instance was totally bad. The U.S. should’ve done nothing to counter USSR and their dominoes across the world. US should’ve just let every country fall into an authoritarian USSR influenced country.
Obviously, I don’t blindly think every war was good, such as Bush era Iraq. However, defending Kuwait was 100% defensible in Gulf War.
The issue is not black and white like you people that barely got by high school make it out.
yes, because what happened in the past can perfectly predict what’s going to happen next.
not saying you are definitely wrong, but if someone wants to have a bet i wouldn’t bet on the side of China not invading.
Spoken like an American
Spoken like someone who is blinded by the Trump admin, obliviously naive. You must’ve been one of those that thought Russia would never invade Ukraine despite US intelligence.
What’s your source for that. China has no more reason to invade Taiwan next year than they have at any point in the last 30 years
Why would they need to invade Taiwan? They already have their own companies making RAM.
they have more than practical reasons.
It’s called unfinished business. Xi is not going to give up on reunifying all of china. They got their Hong Kong now they need the Taiwan
China has been wanting to reunite with Taiwan ever since the founding of the PRC. the reason has always been there, and right now they are more ready than ever.
keep a close eye on what Chinese military is doing.
Why are they more ready now than they were 2 years ago? Politically nothing has really changed I know Americans like to think that Trump is a big factor but he isn’t, since even he is just as bullish on China as any other US president has been and it’s not as if the military is left.
Well, our economy is collapsing from bad debt and inflation, we’ve alienated ourselves from our ally’s, we’ve relocated aircraft carriers and are starting new wars.
It’s honestly a great time for china to exert some force.
you really are asking me to do the research for you huh.
a quick web search finds me:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/29/china-live-fire-military-drills-around-taiwan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges
and it’s not hard to find more.
Umm hundreds of Chinese ambassadors to Xi Himself. How many do you want I’ll start pulling them.
Fuck Sam Altman
My most recent hobby has been an old Suzuki Samurai that I dragged out of the woods a few years ago. It doesn’t use much RAM. It doesn’t even have fuel injection.
I’ve also been getting back into archery with my kid.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that making it harder to get a computer and play games is a huge miscalculation. If everyone is distracted by Call of Battle: Dutyfield then you have fewer bored assholes casting about for something to do, and if people can still play Factorio, you don’t end up with bored, autistic, organized assholes casting about for something to do.
Back in my day, we downloaded ram. 8GB at a time.
Which was used to then download a car.
I believe that’s the plan for the future, too. Conglomo A owns all the RAM, but we can rent access.
I hate that this is the plan. Time to burn it all down
Exactly. No loyalty to this system. The only solution is to destroy it.
I downloaded a gallon of cum and my parents got really mad
I’m so glad I bought this book years ago
I was saving it for a retirement hobby project but looks like I will have to open it sooner than I thought.
IDK at the current price trend, maybe we’re approaching a point where having sweatshops make ferromagnetic memory modules in GB sizes is feasible. I’d better start building a couple of hangars for my GPU memory.
“everything you care about” - Time to change hobbies and care about things that don’t have RAM then.
Starts to get into crochet, sewing and knitting.
Yup. My local shooting range doesn’t need RAM. The archery target in my back yard doesn’t need RAM. The park where I go jogging doesn’t need RAM. My local food bank always needs volunteers, and they’re not handing out RAM to hungry people. My local theater always needs volunteer ushers, and you get to see a show for free.
My garden is far too small to be able to do archery in it sadly. Plus with a path behind it could result in killing someone. Maybe at a push I could manage a dart board somewhere.
Maybe because tech has been my main hobby for so long, I don’t feel so bad about shaking things up like this yep.
I’d be happy to use last gen stuff too
I mean, I can stay on ps5 for another 5 years if needed, I don’t really care.
And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I “only” paid about 200 USD
I would LOVE to believe this will force automakers to return to using buttons instead of touchscreen.
Yeah, I know. But I’d sure love to believe it.
I think this will be required to get full score on the safety test in Europe soon, so hopefully it can bleed into the global car market in a few years.
Unfortunately cars are one of those things where the brussels effect doesn’t work as well since lots of companies are set up to manufacture and deliver specific models to specific countries
Hyundai Motor group said they would commit to buttons but the leaks of the ioniq 5 refresh look like all the other chinese crap out there with a bigass tablet in the middle.
Also fuck Elon and Tesla for starting that shit
https://i.imgur.com/LgWLZsG_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand
Hahahahahahahha…but yeah, that’d be awesome. Fucking damn touchscreens in cars.
. . . And then the market will be flooded with RAM that companies preordered and can’t pay for, because the AI bubble burst before it could be manufactured.
Hey, I can dream, right? And seriously, I would be quite happy if this causes an increase in dumb appliances, devices, and cars in the meanwhile.
When the bubble bursts it will play out exactly the same as it always does. The government will use money it doesn’t have to bail out the too-big-to-fail companies causing runaway inflation, rates will be jacked up to bring inflation down causing a recession, we will all get laid off, and by the time everything starts to stabilize and we have disposable income something will happen to make prices untenable again.
I hear here a lot that the AI bubble will burst. And I wish this was true. But is there any indication for it? Crypto and GPU bubbles didn’t burst. I worry that it’s just another Lemmy circlejerk.
Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)
I’m fairly certain that spinning up RAM fabs isn’t super quick nor something that doesn’t require the most cutting edge tech.
China is definitely ahead of the US in a lot of tech, but unless they do invade Taiwan they might not have quite a deep enough bench.
Ram doesn’t require anywhere near the tech we need for processors.
They’re going this kind of thing for processors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
Ram uses tech that’s way older. and for our needs, they can just stack smaller, low density chips
I’ve not missed a Veritasium video in a long time 😄. I’m sure that RAM is much easier to produce, but DRR5 is pretty complex still, and is what has been snapped up in whole by these AI companies. I’m actually wondering if we’ll see a resurgence of DDR4 motherboards, as those fabs are likely around still, just likely more idle if used at all.
And if they complain, just shout “free market” at them
What if the unintentional consequence of hardware hoarding by AI companies is we have fewer devices being made that spy on us, like smart TVs and appliances.
The idea is that in the future your “personal computer” will be a streaming stick that you plug into a monitor to access your Microslop Copilot Windows 12 OneDrive Azure Cloud Virtual PC for $99 a month.
Yup, they’re 100% trying to shift towards cloud computing. It has already been happening with gaming, and many players have decided that they’re okay with a slightly worse experience if it means they can run their games on a potato PC. Tech companies see the blood in the water, and know that there is money to be made in cloud computing. Everything is shifting to SAAS, so it only makes sense that hardware will be a subscription next.
Thats a nightmare :(
A terminal would require more RAM, not less.
It’s not just desktops, it’s phones and laptops and consoles
Good thing I don’t care about any of those things enough to pay the rip-off prices. I’m fine with my 4 year old phone and 10 year old PC. If they crap out then I’ll replace them with some cheap old crap. I don’t need high specs, there isn’t much worth running these days.
As the article explains, you will indirectly pay.
Any product that contains RAM or any service that relies on the use of computers at scale, is going to pass the operating cost (the cost of sourcing RAM) onto the consumer.
And these prices will never go down again. Even when shortages end, costoners will be used to the higher prices, and companies will be used to charging them.
This isn’t the first time that the memory companies have colluded to raise prices. It’s perhaps one of the more extreme instances, yes, but with the AI excuse going away, things will have to go back to reality, especially as China ramps up production and ruins the cartel setup we’re currently stuck with.
And used prices will surge as more people make the same decision as you
That’s assuming everyone’s devices crap out during this year or two while the AI and memory companies play pretend that they’re actually going to use up all this memory.
Doesn’t need to be everyone, there’s always going to be people needing replacement devices, it just takes a greater percentage of those to buy used to drive up demand. At the same time it’s like supply will drop at least some as people are put off buying a new device so their used device doesn’t reach the market
AI’s are more important than humans now. I guess we should get used to this. Line must go up.
Soon it will just be a bunch of AIs buying, selling, and interacting with each other.
That is what we in the professional world would term the “poop” scenario.
Line must goes up until it hits a ceiling, then system collapses… but line go up again after!
