As economies modernize, their gains come from more and better leveraging of energy inputs. Started with fire, human slaves, horses and oxen. The brain is a major consumer of calories in the body. While sci-fi has explored many themes of human, alien, and technological endeavor, it has not, in my limited reading, dealt with the energy consumption of the computing systems (whether it be HAL-9000 or the Star Trek ship computers). I'm not surprised at the energy intensity requested for deploying AI at true scale.
Either the power gets generated, or the scale doesn't happen. There may be international competition issues that ultimately drive this.