If we're all using distilled open-weight models in ASICs in our own systems the energy cost will come way down. The question is when that becomes a reasonable solution for a broad set of use cases.

I think this is a case where just drawing a "line goes up" extrapolation is incredibly misleading because there is _tremendous_ economic pressure to get costs down, and costs are very tightly tied to energy use. All of these systems are incredibly inefficient right now and have a lot of room to go down in energy use. I'd guess that the absolute _floor_ is burning model weights directly to silicon and that's like a 90+% reduction in energy use.

No it'll be fine as long as you do your part and not drive a car, or have AC, or eat meat, or have children, or live in detached housing, or...