Demand is low. Remove Starlink and look how often they launch. And look at how it has changed over the years. There's a reason they went so hard into Starlink.
More subtle thought-out AI tends to work better than AI for the sake of it anyway. If you deliver something useful, people will end up using it. A lot of current AI use is not particularly useful though.
I have noticed this too. It predictably appears whenever there is a heatwave. I also don't really see these articles reflecting reality - a lot of places have AC, its not really unaffordable to get a portable setup if you don't have one, and I don't know anyone refusing to get one because they are worried about the carbon emissions (especially here in France where electricity is almost all nuclear generated anyway). Yet there is a flood of articles and a predictable argument detached from reality every single time.
I remember discovering that pi x 10^7 is very close to the number of seconds in a year while at uni.
One of my tutors was convinced this had to be more than coincidence, but I always figured it was just chance and a nice but sometimes useful shortcut...
It feels like a consequence of market/regulatory failure in the US rather than a real demand for the technology. Internet access is far cheaper and more widely available in most other developed countries.