Landauer's principle says that information = energy.
But energy was never free.
Even if there is a term in Physics called Gibbs free energy, what you have is "usable energy" and this energy requires some investment of time, skills and effort to acquire.
That is, money.
Energy on earth is actually plentiful. The only problem is that we have gatekeepers called governments, so most people have to beg for energy the way ancient peasants had to beg their clan leader for a piece of mammoth meat. As if the mammoths and deer and etc weren't plentiful in the forest.

The thing is you want the energy to come freely from the people.
You want people to be ACTUALLY rich i.e. to have so much energy access that they will power the AI themselves. They have enough surplus.
Today, about 90% of people have energy deficit budgets and cannot afford refrigeration, air conditioning, or even just an oven. Many even lack sufficient lighting to study all night, and definitely not enough energy to work on a computer.
They basically have to choose to use energy only for survival needs.
They have to use firewood and other toxic energy sources to get by.
And you want them to pay enough to make AI profitable?
You want them, basically, to pay for electricity they will not use directly but simply to get some dopamine hits, while they continue to suffer energy poverty?
Yes, granted, they just might get insights into how to get democratic access to more energy. But that will not happen so easily. We're in a new era of software and the energy piper will have to be paid big time.

To refer back to the traditional view of software where you make one Excel app and boom, millions and billions: that was a discovery phase. Just like the discovery phase of physics.
Harsh truth.
The discoveries of unique simple physics — simple machines, F = ma, PV = nRT, Q = mc(theta), are moreless over just as are the discoveries of unique simple software tools with exponential curves. We've done design tools like Figma and Adobe, data analysis tools like Excel, maths tools, game tools, database tools, software design tools like Python. I mean, what next?
What next is the physics equivalent of particle physics or rocket launches by NASA to go to other planets (SpaceX's rocket business is still on the money).
The high energy must be paid for by the people willingly for a novel outcome later.
In particle physics, we are curious about nature. With SpaceX, we are curious about Mars.
With AI, we are curious about democratic access to usable energy which, if we're to go the route of intelligent discourse and not fists, will take a considerable energy equivalent to dig out that intel from the ether of possibilities.
But that is too long a route. There is a short cut.

For the first time in human history, human kings and queens will have to stop gatekeeping energy and let it flow freely, so that people are actually rich enough to power AI to the future.
Oil from wherever will have to be let to flow, Nuclear will have to be let to nuclear with no doomsday talks of a boogieman nuking the world (we have so many cameras its ridiculous how a nuke can even be made in secret anymore. Its just not possible unless the entire country has closed borders).
Printing dollars never created more energy.
Landauer's principle will not be cheated.