Jeff Bezos believes AI will force you to rent your PC from the cloud, and the RAM crisis is accelerating it.

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The past few months have seen major changes in the computing industry. On the one hand, we’ve seen the likes of Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips deliver massive increases in local performance in laptops (especially for integrated graphics), and on the other, the RAM crisis is driving prices sky high in tech.

The main factor that ties it all together? The push for AI. With the biggest memory manufacturers shifting priorities to allow AI data centers to thrive, Micron also said “the DRAM shortage could last much longer,” as it’s clear that PCs, phones, gaming consoles and everything in between will be at a premium as early as this year. Heck, there’s even a fear that some of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series GPUs are out.

Consumer RAM is declining in favor of power-consuming AI, and SSD storage is also proving to be an expensive enterprise. At least, Intel confirmed to Tom’s Guide that it has “about 9 to 12 months” of laptop stock left before costs start to rise due to memory price increases, and one expert also believes there’s still some time left.

However, it seems more likely than ever that there will be a shock of price increases across tech, and that includes many upcoming PCs. Remember, ChatGPT is only for the likes of AI services like Gemini and Copilot, whether you use them or not.

In light of all this, the RAM crunch indicates that consumer PCs are a very expensive purchase, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to ease any time soon — until around 2028, when memory shortages become commonplace. So, what will the landscape of computing look like in a few years?

As Windows Central’s Jez Corden rightly points out, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ prediction may be the way the computing industry is headed: ditching local PCs for subscription-based cloud computing.

Rent-a-Cloud

In an interview with the New York Times, Bezos talked about how AI is a key focus at Amazon. As you can see, it is not surprising every The company is doubling down on incorporating artificial intelligence into its products, apps, services and more.

But the real kicker comes when Bezos mentions a brewery he visited and the company had to build its own power station to “improve the efficiency of their brewery with electricity.” Since there was no power grid, they had to create their own form of electricity.

“Back then, everybody did that. If a hotel wanted electricity, they had their own electric generator,” Bezos explains. “I looked at it, and I thought, this is how computing is today; everyone has their own data center.”

Interestingly, he continues to say, “It doesn’t last long. It doesn’t make sense. You’re going to compute from the grid. That’s AWS.”

That is not going to last. It has no meaning. You are going to buy an off grid calculation. That’s AWS.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon

That comment was made in 2024, and today, it rings truer than ever. Many online services and sites rely on Amazon’s AWS to run (that’s why an AWS outage last year brought down Snapchat, Venmo, Ring, Zoom and more).

So, what if this solution was applied to the likes of local PCs? You’ll have all the PC peripherals ready, such as a mouse, keyboard and monitor, without a PC – all thanks to the operating system running in the cloud so you can tap away.

For one, it’s already been in the works. Great cloud gaming services like Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Nvidia GeForce Now and Amazon Luna have also made steady progress over the years, so much so that Microsoft now calls them all Xbox. GeForce Now also offers RTX 5080-level gaming performance. But even before that, Netflix made streaming movies and shows the standard on physical media.

Now, that’s not to say these services aren’t expensive (the price of Xbox Game Pass increasing to $30 per month isn’t ideal), but compared to the increased prices we pay for PCs due to the RAM crisis, it gives companies a reason to start renting hardware used for cloud computing.

It’s a scary thought, but that RAMageddon is pushing more.

Will the AI ​​bubble burst first?

AI is a priority for most tech companies, and billions of dollars are being pumped into data centers to ensure the results are worth the price. But now, virtually everything a consumer sees is being used to generate AI slop and grok sexual images. Not exactly “next-gen”.

ChatGPT’s Sam Altman has said we’re in an AI bubble, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has tagged it as a “doomer story.” The question is, will the bubble burst before we see it? all Real benefits of artificial intelligence come to light? That’s hard to say, but either way, the tech will be expensive in the process.

Will it be expensive enough for companies to resort to subscription-based cloud computing to support AI demand? I doubt it will happen anytime soon, but Bezos’ comments reveal a shift for the future of computing — one that sees PC hardware becoming such a premium that we’ll resort to the cloud instead.

Either way, PCs are going to be expensive, so if you’re looking to upgrade, you’ll want to buy now or wait for RAMageddon to blow up.

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