Sam Altman changed his name to RAM Altman following criticism of his statements about RAM

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman changed his name on the social media platform X to RAM Altman. This move came amid criticism of his recent comments about the shortage of RAM and the practicality of storing it on personal computers.

On October 29, while appearing on the Cheeky Pint podcast, Altman stated that storing large amounts of RAM in personal computers is inefficient. 

In his view, limited resources are better directed toward data centers, where they can be used much more productively.

“From the perspective of global resource allocation, it’s actually quite terrible when everyone has a significant portion of the world’s limited DRAM supply in their computer, which is used only 5% of the time. If you’re trying to cope with a supply shortage, you need to ensure maximum memory utilization in the cloud. And for some reason, many people’s intuition tells them the opposite,” said Sam Altman.

The OpenAI CEO’s remarks sparked a wave of discontent among social media users. Billionaire Elon Musk also joined in the criticism, posting a meme on X from the movie *Inglourious Basterds* with the caption: “People deserve their own RAM, too!”

Sam Altman decided to go along with the wave of jokes and changed his profile name. Now, instead of the usual “Sam Altman,” it reads “Ram Altman”—a play on the word “RAM,” short for random access memory.

This isn’t the only recent change in OpenAI’s terminology. The company has also proposed referring to data centers as “computing campuses.”

At the same time, the trend toward renaming terms in the field of artificial intelligence isn’t limited to OpenAI. Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump instructed U.S. government agencies to use the new term “superintelligence” instead of the familiar term “artificial intelligence.”

Sam Altman changed his name on social media platform X to RAM Altman.