The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I.

In 2016, Alex de Vries read somewhere that a single bitcoin transaction consumes as much energy as the average American household uses in a day. At the time, de Vries, who is Dutch, was working at a consulting firm. In his spare time, he wrote a blog, called Digiconomist, about the risks of investing in cryptocurrency. He found the energy-use figure disturbing. "I was, like, O.K., that's a massive amount, and why is no one talking about it?" he told me recently over Zoom.