Self-indulgent rant:
One reason why IMO, the case against "AI" is as cut and dried as the case against cryptocoins is that shutting those two sectors down through government action would immediately solve the household energy transition for Iceland, for example
The maths is fairly straightforward: switching personal transportation over to electricity here would roughly double household power consumption (give or take, with the assumption that current plans to improve public transport pan out)
We don't have that much excess power generation. We even have to occasionally limit power delivery to heavy users
Increasing power generation that much requires tough choices: we'd have to ruin the environment some way. We just don't have that many locations left for hydro or geothermal. Most locations that remain are popular tourist sites—destroying them would be bad for the economy—important ecosystems, or would require improvements to the grid that nobody seems to be willing to pay for
However, datacentres in Iceland are almost exclusively used for "AI" or crypto. You can't buy regular hosting in these centres for love or money. If you buy hosting in Iceland, odds are that the rack is in an office building in Reykjavík somewhere, not a data centre
And those data centres use more power than Icelandic households combined
But, instead, the plan is currently to destroy big parts of places like Þjórsárdalur valley, one of the most green and vibrant ecosystems in Iceland
Baldur Bjarnason
GlennMG