> You've deliberately been vague about your position on the utility of AI.

Because it's not the interesting question. The interesting question is what it does as long as it's controlled by a handful of people.

AI's usefulness depends on that question, it cannot be answered in isolation. A lighter is useful in the hands of somebody starting a camp fire to warm themselves and their community, but dangerous in the hands of an arsonist trying to burn down said community.

> If you think AI is useful if it were publicly owned, surely high energy costs and hardware costs are necessary if the public were to use it?

Public ownership and public usage are not the same thing. Again, ownership and power dynamics are the point (that you still haven't addressed!)

> Whats the point of talking about hardware and energy costs when that's something the public needs to bear that cost in one way or another, whether by voting for it or not?

How have we established that the public needs to bear it one way or another? If AI was public, we could have usage restrictions based on societal merit, as an example. Not every AI use is ... useful. All of them are costly to society.

> So why is hardware and energy costs even a problem if the public consents to using AI with their own revealed preference?

What are you talking about? The grandma's electric heating is getting more expensive so some jerkoff can create deepfake porn or so capitalists can fire workers. They're not the same people.