Comment by Matl
4 months ago
> The DRAM companies would be building more if they could.
You keep arguing as if there's only one side to this, the producers/DRAM companies who can't scale production fast enough.
But there's two sides to a market, the producers (DRAM makers) and the consumers, (AI industry). I am arguing for increasing the supply by taking some away from the AI industry. This is BECAUSE on the production side there's no way to address this fast enough.
The DRAM producers have also agreed to work together to raise the prices in the past and are probably rather enjoying it being their turn to get a ton of money again. d Free markets break down when cartels form, because then you wind up with an effective monopoly despite having multiple suppliers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_10_...
It's not in anybody's best interest to take away supply for the AI industry. For better or worse (and whether you believe it or not), AI technologies are coming that will be transformational. If the United States decides to handicap their AI industry, China will simply say "thank you very much" and develop these technologies first. Because of the nature of recursive self-improvement, the country that develops powerful AI first will most likely have an economic lead for quite a while.
It sucks that DRAM is so expensive, but it is for a good (economically useful) cause.