I wonder ... how much power is consumed by "data" centers creating and dispersing ads which are only blocked by users ?

[eppur_se_muova]

Advertisers burn energy to create tons of ads/spam; servers and networks burn energy to transmit them around the world; home computers burn energy to pre-process, recognize, and filter out ads/spam -- nothing produced, energy consumed, environment degraded -- yet someone's making money ? This needs fixed.

I'm still waiting for AI to become the Global Crossing of the 2020s. I hope it happens on Trmp's watch, so his name forever will be linked with even bigger, and enormously more foolish, money losses than he's already created. A fitting capstone/gravestone to his "career".

At the end of the day, this AI cycle feels less like a revolution and more like a rerun. I’ve seen this story before—fiber in 2000, shale in 2014, cannabis in 2019. Each time, the technology or product was real, even transformative. But the capital cycle was brutal, the math unforgiving, and the equity holders were ultimately incinerated. AI will be no different. The datacenters will be built, the chips will hum, and some of the capacity will eventually prove mind-blowingly useful. But the investors footing the bill today will regret ever making the investment. That’s how bubbles end—not with a bang of innovation, but with the slow, grinding realization of negative returns, for years into the future. When shareholders finally wake up to the fact that AI isn’t generating cash flow, only burning it, the guillotine will fall—on management, on the stocks, and on the broader market that bet its future on a fantasy.

https://pracap.com/global-crossing-reborn/

[lostnfound]

1. Great question. And consumer ultimately pays for it all.

Through higher prices, wasted time, and degraded experiences.

[tanyev]

2. An extortion economy.

[EdmondDantes_]

3. At this point? I'd guess relatively little

The ads might be created using AI, but not individually and on demand for each user.

[justaprogressive]

4. You sure know how to ask the tough questions!