Not totally a conspiracy, because the government is only tangentially involved, but I think the AI industry is propped up by dirty energy companies. Before AI we had crypto and NFTs. Those just happen to go away right as AI is coming into use? Yeah right.

Our governments have consistently said they can't regulate dirty energy until alternatives are providing enough energy where they aren't needed. Clean energy has been increasing, but this just means dirty energy needs to increase consumption by this same amount. Crypto and AI are perfect for just consuming any available energy, so then there isn't enough left over to say we can decompression dirty energy infrastructure.