I did some math for this particular case by asking Google’s Gemini Pro 3 (via AI studio) to evaluate the press release. Nvidia has since edited the release to remove the “tons of copper” claim, but it evaluated the other numbers at a reported API cost of about 3.8 cents. If the stated pricing just recovers energy cost, that implies 1500kJ of energy as a maximum (less if other costs are recovered in the pricing). A human thinking for 10 minutes would use sbout 6kJ of direct energy.

I agree with your point about induced demand. The “win” wouldn’t be looking at a single press release with already-suspect numbers, but rather looking at essentially all press releases of note, a task not generally valuable enough to devote people towards.

That being said, we normally consider it progress when we can use mechanical or electrical energy to replace or augment human work.