Leading innovators in technology and business agree: AI is shaping the future. Visionaries like Elon Musk, Eric Schmidt, Dharmesh Shah, and Marc Andreessen emphasize that now is the time to invest your energy and attention in this transformative field.

But is this true? Or is it just a crypto fad? Should I drop everything and follow their steps?

As with any disruptive technology, predicting the trajectory of its exponential growth is challenging. The big question remains: where is the puck going to land? Who will seize the most value?

Big companies are using their competitive advantage—scale and size—to develop their AI capabilities by creating training and inference infrastructure, launching their own AI chats and agents within their ecosystems. Startups are trying to specialize and pick a niche where they can use this new technology to boost productivity.

The race to develop AI is astonishing, with groundbreaking advancements making headlines every week, people panicking about agents stealing jobs, and billionaires’ hyperbole everywhere—Yeah, pretty much what you’d expect to find on everyone’s feed these days. The tech seems revolutionary and full of promise, but let’s be real: It’s a bubble. We’re in a bubble.

Technological development is gradual; it’s never as fast as promised. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run — Amara’s law.

I’ve been thinking about how I can position myself in the AI world. I understand it’s a bubble, and I don’t want to fall into the trap or the hype. But, on the other hand, I don’t want to miss out on what seems to be the most important technological shift of my lifetime. I’m cautious, observing how the market evolves.

Great Ideas Don’t Come from the Noise; They Come from the Quiet Corners

Beneath the fog of hype, I believe the industry that will be most positively affected by AI is the energy industry.

Energy has massive tailwinds. Not just AI, which was the tipping point for me. Every disruptive technology with big promises is fundamentally based on energy (you could argue that energy is the foundation for everything).

Crypto runs primarily on energy (though it’s migrating to PoS instead of PoW); manufacturing and robotics? Energy. Electric cars? Energy. The Green revolution? Energy. Every single technological promise has energy at its core. Finally, an AI chip consumes 10 times more energy than a regular one—though it’s true they’ll become more efficient, that doesn’t mean we’ll use less energy; we’ll simply have more computational power to deploy.

As we move away from fossil fuels like gas and oil, we’ll rely more on electric energy (which, in turn, 60% is produced with fossil fuels [1]). This process is called electrification—the process of replacing technologies or systems that rely on non-electric energy sources.

This is just beginning. Look at these headlines:

It’s clear they’re preparing for a massive wave of energy demand. They’ve already realized that the choke point of this technology isn’t the models, the chips, or the regulation: it’s the energy.

I’m convinced that energy is the most attractive industry right now and in the future, not just because of high demand, not just because it’s easier to predict, but also due to the sector’s lack of innovation. Let me explain.

For the past 15 years, it’s been all about the Green revolution. Billions upon billions have been invested to birth Green energy. But during this period, even as a massive investment was made in renewables, very little was invested in the infrastructure that actually produces the majority of the energy we use today.

Not only was there no investment, but in energy, it was “sinful” to invest in anything that wasn’t Green. The industry’s prevailing thought was: why invest in R&D for “dirty energy” when we’re scaling up investment in “clean energy”? Dirty energy is on its way out. On the other hand, it was tough to fund non-Green projects because no one wanted to finance them.

Back to the same point: what they didn’t understand was the rate of change. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. This led to the poor electrical infrastructure we have today.

In my personal opinion, it’s crazy that, because of a Green dogma, competitiveness was sacrificed. Again, in my opinion, I believe my generation (Millennials) and the one below mine (Gen Z) were instilled with a Green panic that the world was ending, all based on fairly questionable science. [2]

Although this social pressure was misleading, it wasn’t all bad.

Without that pressure, renewable technology wouldn’t have been born. Without that pressure, we wouldn’t have had batteries, solar panels, EVs, etc. That change is incredible. But let’s be honest: after 15 years and billions upon billions invested, we know that, with the technology and future demand, achieving zero-emission energy right now is impossible. At the same time, we’re stuck with plants and generators from the last century, which pollute more than they should.

A coal plant wastes 68% of the energy it produces. [3] Coal accounts for 27% of the world’s energy production. There are more modern hybrid plants that reduce waste to about 40%, but due to a lack of investment, we’re stuck with the inefficient ones. [4] [5]

We need to invest in non-renewable energy to make it super efficient. If we accept that we’ll need it, why not make it efficient? How can we make a power plant produce double the energy with the same non-renewable inputs? How can we invest in the grid to reduce energy waste? We need to invest in designing much more efficient plants and infrastructure.

Today, we have no other choice. We must accept that we need fossil fuels as part of the transition. After accepting this, it’s up to us to handle it responsibly by increasing the efficiency of “dirty energy.” This is still a Green initiative, but focused on productivity, not dogma.

We can no longer hide behind Green virtue signaling. If countries want to remain competitive, they’ll need to invest heavily in non-renewable projects, as we have a 15 to 20 year lag.

I’m not saying we should open thousands of new coal plants. I’m saying we need to make the ones we already have more efficient. We need to invest in R&D for non-renewable energy to make it cleaner.

I’m optimistic because this investment will allow us to make non-renewable energy cleaner and less polluting. At the same time, we’ll keep advancing the development of Green energy until we achieve 100% clean energy production.

The future of energy isn’t Green; it’s a mix.