The

Bigger Jack! This is hell.

The planet's on fire.

So, yes, this is hell.

As we have discussed with guests on the show in the past, blockchain needs a lot of energy and water to make its many calculations.

Cryptocurrency and its mining for Bitcoins also is a huge drain on the energy grid and water, which is necessary to sustain life on this planet.

AI also consumes tons of power and so does what we

innocuously call the cloud. But exactly how much power we do not know because those behind

things like AI and the cloud don't have to report exactly how much they siphon off the grid it shares with the public.

In fact, it seems all that is incredibly, all that is incredibly inefficient and huge amounts of energy

are being wasted, which is not great when we are living in a time of increasing climate change

when we should be consuming

energy far more efficiently.

Of course, proponents of AI promote stories of how AI will fix all that.

Just give it time.

Sure, it's taking up valuable resources now, which are especially needed as global warming

becomes more extreme. Yes, it may be

contributing to speeding up climate change now, but at some point in the future, I guess sure

will solve all our problems, even the problems AI itself has contributed to, if not created,

or not? Probably not. Mostly not. As data centers are driving

energy usage through the roof to skyrocketing levels that we're not even certain

it will actually need.

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