>why does nobody care about the enormous and absurd energy cost to ___________
Just fill in the blank and you've described human history after we started digging up coal in mass.
Now, beyond that, think of it this way...
You're very rich, but to keep having new yachts and pleasure islands and jumbo jets you need for the plebs around you to keep breeding and then spending 18 years to train them not to be completely stupid, then another 4 to 10 years for them to be experts, all while hoping they don't get hit by a car or off themselves. That's a massive amount of resource expenditures if you're looking to make yourself even richer. Now think of it this way. Instead of spending a lot of effort training those meat popsicles, you train a machine. Yea, it takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to get it where it needs to go. But after you have this 'general' machine, you never need other humans again. How much energy will that save you on your goal of world domination?
Just fill in the blank and you've described human history after we started digging up coal in mass.
Now, beyond that, think of it this way...
You're very rich, but to keep having new yachts and pleasure islands and jumbo jets you need for the plebs around you to keep breeding and then spending 18 years to train them not to be completely stupid, then another 4 to 10 years for them to be experts, all while hoping they don't get hit by a car or off themselves. That's a massive amount of resource expenditures if you're looking to make yourself even richer. Now think of it this way. Instead of spending a lot of effort training those meat popsicles, you train a machine. Yea, it takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to get it where it needs to go. But after you have this 'general' machine, you never need other humans again. How much energy will that save you on your goal of world domination?