Unfortunately, You Need to Know What the Jevons Paradox is

The Jevons Paradox describes the counterintuitive economic phenomenon where increased resource efficiency leads to higher, rather than lower, total consumption because it expands the range of economically viable applications. While often mislabeled as a paradox, this dynamic is a fundamental feature of technological evolution. Historical examples, such as the steam engine’s impact on coal demand and the proliferation of hot water usage following the invention of home water heaters, illustrate how efficiency lowers barriers to entry for new industries. Currently, the rapid advancement of AI in code generation mirrors this pattern; as coding becomes cheaper, demand for software engineering and the underlying electricity required to power it will likely surge. Ultimately, energy and intelligence function as base-level substrates, meaning their consumption is constrained only by the limits of human imagination and the physical infrastructure required to sustain them.