Now: Let's skip the AI build out and keep things in the right direction.
I don't see a plausible scenario in which there's a reduction in demand for artificial intelligence in the near future.
As a general rule old tech is far more power hungry (per unit of work) than new tech. Sure my old Atari computer used very few watts compared to my modern 50 core server (I'm not sure what GPU), but the modern server can do a lot more per watt.
> developing less new stuff, and just slowed down the economy for a simpler life.
To each their own - I would find that world boring. I enjoy camping for a weekend, but I'm very glad to get back to modern civilization and there are plenty more luxuries that I want in development.
[1] https://p.kagi.com/proxy/jaJn771.jpg?c=LeUEJczBkA3eiHIb6Q3EK... It doesn't quite come across in the picture but this adapter is gigantic.
I'd guess the Colecovion has a linear power supply which is known to be very large for the power delivered, and very inefficient. A quick search says the power supply was 28.5 watts. I'm typing this on a laptop with a 15 watt power supply (pinebook pro - about as low power as you can get in a laptop); connected to a USB hub with a 20 watt power supply!. My work laptop has a 240 watt power supply. I'm not sure what laptop you have, but I'd guess it can draw more power than a Colecovision if you worked it - but also that if all you were doing was running 10 Colecovion emulators it would draw less power.
We also should mention that our laptops have a screen built in and counted as part of the power consumption. The Colecovion expected to be connected to a power hungry CRT television.
Laptop is a Thinkpad P16s AMD Gen 2 (name rolls right off the tongue). I don't actually know what the power draw is, but it's plugged into a 100W power supply right now via USB-C.
I tried it and it redirected to the imgur.com front page. And I am logged into a paid kagi account. I guess the URLs are per-user.
Regardless, it's not hard to find; if you go on YouTube people show off the colecovision adapter. I think even the Angry Video Game Nerd mentioned it in his video on the Colecovision.
My point entirely is that people shouldn't have everything that they want if the creation of that thing is unsustainable.
And the economy shouldn't slow down because it's still not big enough to give everyone a good life. We need lots of growth, and we need to distribute it better so profits go to improving normal peoples lives instead of making billionaires even richer.
Even if everyone globally went carbon-neutral today, we'd already be pretty darn fucked, because is literally no buffer left! Temperatures would still increase for a few years, before settling at levels that will already cause catastrophic famines and escalating wars. And now we must consider that just looking at the raw numbers, we've never been further away from being carbon-neutral (plus/minus 1-2 years).
(let's please skip any discussions who should receive how much blame, since that's not relevant to this larger point)
Every bit of additional emissions today will kill more people and animals in the coming decades. And since Jevons paradox means that scaling will not cause the removal of our existing carbon infrastructure until it becomes fully cost-prohibitive, which is not purely a question of market forces, since politicians are already artificially keeping fossil power alive. They can just keep subsidizing the fossil industry!
So you're proposing that we put all our cards on the outcome that has a tiny chance of working out. Meanwhile, the current AI buildout is already strengthening the fossil industry, since suddenly there's huge demand for gas power!