Ok, fine, but I think it's disindigenous to only mention energy expenditure. There's also infrastructure, necessary re-training and R&D - of which we don't know how much must be spent just to stay in the market.
Competitive, venture backed companies losing money when you take R&D into account in a high growth market is how the tech industry has worked for decades.
Shopify, Uber and Airbnb all hit profitability after 14 years. Amazon took 9.
The mentioned didn't require the sort of R&D AI does.
And this isn't something that will go away anytime soon. OpenAI for instance is projecting that in 2030 R&D will still account for 45% of their costs. They think they'll be profitable by that time, or so they're telling investors.
And none of those companies lost anywhere near as much money as "AI" is currently, and will continue to do. Just because they become profitable 5 or 10 or 15 years from now does not mean that they will be able to pay off the hundreds of billions to trillions spent getting them there anytime soon. And for what? AI slop ruining every fucking thing while heating the planet ever faster? Sounds like a great future we have ahead with "AI".
Shopify, Uber and Airbnb all hit profitability after 14 years. Amazon took 9.