Given that a very clued-in and intelligent fellow I know continues to use [0] OpenAI's LLM-based tools despite the bad press that we're talking about here and the bad press that we're not talking about there, I'd say that the public that matters doesn't view it negatively.
[0] I saw the guy paste a link the to results from one in a group chat we're in just a little while ago, in fact. When I say "continues to use", I mean it.
Yeah, it's not like the CEOs of both companies have been saying their product might put everyone out of a job or destroy humanity entirely. Or saying some models were too scary to release publicly and then doing just that. Oh, wait.
You might think that's the case, but the reality is more complex.
This subthread touches on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50092468
A couple of quotes:
> There are some perverse incentives here, the more evil stuff these agents do the more capable and impressive it makes them look. Its also a huge publicity event that gets everyone talking about the company when a rogue event happens.
> Anthropic specifically is clearly trying to get the US government to ban open weight models for anticompetitive reasons. So making LLMs seem (or be!) dangerous aligns with their interests very well.
There's a reason that "all publicity is good publicity" is a catchprase in marketing.
And even without banning open weight models, Anthropic and OpenAI are both looking to create a regulatory moat which protects them from competition. Scaring people is a way to get support for that. They don't need the short term revenue - they have lots of funding - they need the long-term protection of their business model.
For multiple parties, probably mostly OpenAI (which is, of course, as it should be). I would assume the people involved in investigating, cleaning up and coordinating the outfall do not do it for free or cheaply, and neither is the infrastructure required to run this operation.
If it was not mostly OpenAI, or if OpenAI failed to cooperate, we would probably see a lot more lawsuits already.
> "Free marketing" seems like a more relevant characterization.
Yes, nothing screams free marketing quite like an AI company losing control of their AI. The public has been ecstatic in response.