https://japantoday.com/category/tech/ai-gobbling-up-memory-chips-essential-to-gadget-makers

As devices from toys to cars get smarter, gadget makers are
grappling with a shortage of memory and storage needed for
them to work.

Dwindling supplies and soaring costs of Dynamic Random Access
Memory (DRAM) that provides space for computers, smartphones,
and game consoles to run applications or multitask was a hot
topic behind the scenes at the annual gadget extravaganza in
Las Vegas.

Once cheap and plentiful, DRAM -- along with memory chips to
simply store data -- are in short supply because demand spiked
by AI in everything from data centers to wearable devices.

"Everybody is screaming for more supply...they just can't find
enough," Sangyeun Cho, who is responsible for Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business in the U.S., told AFP. "And AI demand is
still mounting."

DRAM and memory chip makers have shifted manufacturing capacity
to cater to AI data centers.

Meanwhile, AI features being added to all kinds of products
have increased the need for DRAM and memory in devices from
laptops to smart rings.

. . .

When China built the Three Gorges Dam it used up about
half the world's concrete supply for nearly a year.

Now the cyber equiv.

AI boxes use lots of OTHER chips too ... are they
going to become impossible to get ?

Oh, and SOMETHING better than LLM 'AI' is decidedly
needed, QUICK. The energy/resource curve for those
things is just insane.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:50:55 -0500
c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> wrote:

Oh, and SOMETHING better than LLM 'AI' is decidedly needed, QUICK.
The energy/resource curve for those things is just insane.

Define "needed." Absolutely *none* of this shenaniganry has been needed
by *anyone* save for the brainless ghouls in the C-suite who fantasize
about being able to obsolete knowledge workers the way they devastated
skilled labor via industrial automation & offshoring in the late 20th/
early 21st century.

But they're not gonna *get* that unless and until someone "cracks" true artificial intelligence (what the tech-fantasists call "AGI.") And they
aren't gonna get *that* any time soon; they're not even looking for it,
because they're know-nothings who don't understand a thing about the
tech they're pumping the money firehose into and are perfectly happy to
be swindled by a career liar who looks good on the teevee and makes
soothing noises about how glorified Markov chains are *so* the Future
Of Everything Forever and *absolutely* gonna replace all their pesky white-collar workers Real Soon Now.

Which, on top of being a farce and the harbinger of a global financial disaster, is ironically enough choking out any *real* research into
machine learning and artificial intelligence, because all the money is
going into taking dead-end tech and doing *as much of it as possible*
in the hopes that this will magically make it not dead-end tech.

What's *needed* is for the bubble to burst as quickly and decisively as possible, so that we don't spend another three years exhausting every
last bit of our financial, industrial, and energy resources on gorram *chatbots.*


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 16/01/2026 16:08, John Ames wrote:

What's*needed* is for the bubble to burst as quickly and decisively as possible, so that we don't spend another three years exhausting every
last bit of our financial, industrial, and energy resources on gorram *chatbots.*

s/chatbots/renewable energy/g
--
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all
private property.

Karl Marx



--- PyGate Linux v1.5.2
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)