it is absolutely fucking our world (environmentally and economically)

Environmentally, it has yet to surpass Bitcoin in electricity usage (though it's set to triple soon, and that will make it a bigger power hog than all of cryptocurrenty).

Economically, this is the biggest bubble since the 1800s railroad boom. Scaled for inflation and GDP railroads were a far bigger gamble than AI, and they hit a 20ish year recession when that boom was over.

Hopefully the "fungible technology" argument holds water, and whatever AI investments don't work out the hardware / data centers can be re-purposed for truly valuable aspects of it. Truly valuable to who is the key question.