Brendan, I'm a big fan of your book, and work.
I don't have a problem with you joining OpenAI; best of luck there!
However, I'm not sure your analysis is quite correct, in this case.
If OpenAI can mobilize X (giga)dollars to buy Y amounts of energy, your work there will not reduce X or Y, it will simply help them produce more "tokens" (or whatever "unit of AI") for a given amount of energy.
So in a sense you're helping make OpenAI tools better, more effective, but it's not helping reduce resource usage.
However, I'm not sure your analysis is quite correct, in this case.
If OpenAI can mobilize X (giga)dollars to buy Y amounts of energy, your work there will not reduce X or Y, it will simply help them produce more "tokens" (or whatever "unit of AI") for a given amount of energy.
So in a sense you're helping make OpenAI tools better, more effective, but it's not helping reduce resource usage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox