Absolutely needed: to get high efficiency for this beast … as it gets better, we’ll become too dependent.
“all of this growth is for a new technology that’s still finding its footing, and in many applications—education, medical advice, legal analysis—might be the wrong tool for the job,”
Eh, that enormous energy consumption hasn’t change, y’know. For Bitcoin, for example, the basic concept is still that ALL wallets have to process ALL transactions, which scales as well as studfing a walrus in a mini Cooper. Bitcoin is extremely energy inefficient and is simply not a good replacement for transactions for the entire world.
Same goes for all other block chain technologies, they’re fundamentally flawed and won’t ever be good. If you want a good alternative to visa and MasterCard, you’ll need something fundamentally different from blockchain tech.