I may have spoken too generally here. By “people” I meant e.g. engineers at Google, Facebook, Reddit, news outlets, that kind of thing. I see it a bit like a security disclosure.

I understand OpenAI is experimenting with their release of the GPT2 model, but I still don't understand their reasoning. If it's too dangerous to release today, what's going to change in the few months before they release it? They don't say why it's too dangerous beyond hand-waving, so it's impossible to be able to protect against that.

Security disclosures are much simpler - we found a vulnerability and we will provide time for the company/team/organization to patch it before announcing it to the world so it won't be exploited by bad actors.

If OpenAI truly feels they have something akin to nuclear weaponry, and that fewer actors having it is better, than they have to openly admit that they consider themselves better gatekeepers of the technology than the public and back away even further from their non-profit/limited profit ideals. "We are creating this technology for the good of the world, but it's so good we are afraid to let you use it, so only we will benefit from it."

I find them wildly inconsistent in their messaging, trying to have the best of everything with none of the drawbacks.