Comment by Barrin92

>The other is unbounded

It isn't. Your demand and your attention are finite too, in fact they're so finite that competition for it is already extreme. There is so much more for you to consume out there that prices in virtual goods have largely been driven to zero. And of course while there's always a new thing, old things continuously have to go away for you to make room. What you are trying to say is that your interests are open-ended, but certainly not infinite or even increasing over any period of time.

That's exactly why energy consumption has stagnated or been falling already in rich places. Virtualisation has driven down the energy cost of your consumption far in excess of additional stuff you can pile on, and that's only going to accelerate.

AI data centers might temporarily raise energy consumption as existing infrastructure runs in parallel, but if you take the AI promises at face value it will eventually depress energy usage as it dematerialises billions of workers and infrastructure. A "dark factory" is a very early version of that.