This is important to point out. All the talk about AI companies underpricing is mistaken. The costs to consumers have just been externalized; the AI venture as a whole is so large that it simply distorts other markets in order to keep its economic reality intact. See also: the people whose electric bills have jumped due to increased demand from data centers.

I think we're going to regret this.

DDR4 manufacturing is being spun down due to lack of demand. The prices on it would be going up regardless of what's happening with DDR5.

Yup.

And even more outrageous is the power grid upgrades they are demanding.

If they need the power grid upgraded to handle the load for their data centers, they should pay 100% of the cost for EVERY part of every upgrade needed for the whole grid, just as a new building typically pays to upgrade the town road accessing it.

Making ordinary ratepayers pay even a cent for their upgrades is outrageous. I do not know why the regulators even allow it (yeah, we all do, but it is wrong).

I am so glad I built my PC back in April. My 2x16gb DDR5 sticks cost $105 all in then, now it’s $480 on amazon. That is ridiculous!

The problem is further upstream. Capitalism is nice in theory, but...

"The trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy." - Herbert Hoover, U.S. President, 1929-1933

And the past half-century has seen both enormous reductions in the regulations enacted in Hoover's era (when out-of-control financial markets and capitalism resulted in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression), and the growth of a class of grimly narcissistic/sociopathic techno-billionaires - who control way too many resources, and seem to share some techno-dystopian fever dream that the first one of them to grasp the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc... trophy will somehow become the God-Emperor of Earth.