I think we can use Bitcoin difficulty chart to approximate how much crypto weighs in the AI / crypto mix. BTC difficulty stopped increasing in 2024 which could be partially explained by both competing for same resources. The other big one, Ethereum moved to proof of stake fairly recently and I think it’s an attractive proposition for other crypto given the above. With this in mind it’s fair to say crypto won’t be a big factor compared to AI growth and I would expect researchers to come to somewhat similar conclusions.
As to how good AI is at things:
Effectiveness of AI powered search is debatable but it’s a subjective thing so I don’t want to get into it.
Translation tech was one of the early ML implementations and it’s good to see it improving even more. Transcription is one of the great uses but how many people need that on frequent basis?
I remain unconvinced that many multimedia generative AI use is legal due to how training data was obtained. We’re in a limbo until this gets decided by US / EU etc.
As you’ve mentioned there is concern that we’ll see a lot of wasteful applications of AI. I was horrified when Googled demoed assistant that would find your car plates by scanning your photo library.
The last one is key I think. Since AI is the current buzzword companies will try to shoehorn it everywhere, regardless of it making sense.