To give you an idea of how many models are being trained, and how the energy costs continue to increase. https://epoch.ai/data/notable-ai-models

I mean, I guess advances could plateau and we stop spending exponentially more energy year after year...

I'm not opining on whether it's a good idea (I doubt we ever voluntarily consume less as a species), but data centres use a lot of energy and billions are being spent building them. https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/26/1104516/three-mi...