If we're going to waste electricity, I'd rather we waste it on AI than on mining Bitcoin. At least AI is providing some utility to its consumers and there's reason to believe it will provide even more in the future.
Bitcoin provides massive utility to customers. The banking cartels + global government massive taxes are destroying livelihoods daily.
The compute is "wasted" to pick winners and secure the system, but it's not actually wasted, it can be made more efficient by actually using the compute to do something, but even if that was not the case, it pays back its value 100x.
Doesn't sound like a waste, does it?
I'd go further and argue mining Bitcoin isn't either, but I digress.