AFAIK, AI data centers have significantly surpassed Bitcoin in terms of electricity consumption already.

It'll depend on how well AI can actually make money.

I think we'll see kind of a plateau of AI models over the next 5 years. LLMs will have reached a level of "skill" that will make it useful for many things related to interacting directly with humans/content. But there won't be a big break through, like AI models pushing scientific progress on their own towards some kind of singularity.

So maybe we'll see some kind of bubble burst with all the sunk investments not really having delivered uses of AI that people/companies are willing to pay lots of money for.

(Oh wait, maybe dating companions and matching algos that actually work well and bring soulmates together could make money ^^)

AI will probably also be more politically acceptible than Bitcoin mining over the next few years.