You actualy think METR is complicit in this marketing stunt? If OpenAI was withholding data, do you think they would not call it out?

I think that the incident itself is a stunt, even if it may not have originally been a deliberate choice on OpenAI's part. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

I disagree. As the saying goes: never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. That goes for both OpenAI and HF (but mostly the former, as the latter was the victim).

Are you claiming that an independent investigation is actually a marketing stunt?

The creator of the well known METR time horizon graph was recently poached by OpenAI [1], there exists intellectual/social/financial overlap between the SV AI Labs and METR, and METR needs to maintain good relations with the labs to continue these sort of collaborations so it doesn't seem too far fetched to believe their relationship may be closer to symbiotic than adversarial.

I wouldn't go quite so far personally based on available evidence, but that sort of arms-length credibility laundering through "independent" research non-profits is/was common in fossil fuel industry, Big Tobacco, etc.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zr37dY5YPRT6s56jY/thomas-kwa...

"This fact remains true" - you have not stated any sort of fact.