Can we actually expect OpenAI to remain "open" with investments like this getting dumped into the project? I'm still waiting for the 1.5G GPT-2 set to get released, but they're still going with that "too dangerous for society" BS that they're using to get journalists' attention...
They need to prove it's safe for society before releasing it. If they don't believe it is then not releasing it is of course the smart thing to do. Furthermore, anyone else in the future who creates something they think might be dangerous now has a better argument, because they can point to OpenAI playing it safe and say "I'm just doing the same thing"
I understand that this tech could be used for nefarious purposes, but this isn't world-ending tech. This is just hard to differentiate from human writing...
The choice to keep their "too powerful model" unreleased is more an attempt to stoke sensationalism out of journalists eager to report on "The AI too dangerous to release" than it is actually an earnest attempt at protecting society.
The dangerous rogue-AI is a Hollywood trope. We don't live in the Ghost In the Shell universe, we live in reality, and a text-generating algorithm isn't particularly dangerous when you think about it.