They're calling it RAMageddon, the extreme shortage of computer memory chips caused by the AI industry's rapacious appetite for them. The city block-sized data centres are not only guzzlers of space, electricity and water; they're gobbling up the world's supply of memory.

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Already, the RAM chip shortage has led to price rises for laptops, gaming consoles and smartphones. It is only going to get worse as the big chip manufacturers, semiconductor giants in computer speak, focus on sating AI's demand rather than those of the humble consumer.

The digital memory lapse was described by one analyst as a "tsunami-like shock" which had pushed the price of smartphones to record highs and had even forced some manufacturers to bail out of the budget end of the market.

Last week, Forbes predicted that the era of digital democratisation, where a reasonably capable smartphone was in most people's reach, was coming to an end. With only three chip manufacturers supplying 90 per cent of world demand and AI's exponential growth and demand, the current shortage isn't likely to end quickly.

So a new digital divide is opening up between those who can afford to pay the higher prices for devices and those who can't.

Industry analysis from the International Data Corporation predicts smartphone shipments across the world will fall by 13 per cent this year and will be felt most acutely in the Middle East and Africa. Millions of people will face exclusion from the internet as the devices which connect them become scarcer and costlier. They'll be locked out of the digital economy which you and I take for granted.

This year, AI is set to consume about 70 per cent of the world's memory hardware production. To meet that demand chip makers are shifting their production focus from consumer grade RAM to stacked high bandwidth memory. One of the big three, US firm Micron, has pulled out of the consumer memory market entirely.

And it's not just consumer electronics feeling the pinch. Companies which depend on high-performance computing are also feeling the pinch, as are scientific institutions.

There's a wicked irony in all this. In the headlong rush to weave AI into the fabric of human life, the industry itself is making it harder to for the average person to reap the........

© The Examiner