> I consider OpenAI to be as economically motivated as any other actor in this space and playing around with user data like that would destroy their business.
And that's exactly why you can only see evidence of this when the stakes are high enough, such as solving a Millenium problem. The legalese they outputted in response to the incident left them an escape hatch that permits the possibility of theft. People familiar with corporate damage control should recognize the verbal maneuvering, often used to paper over actual guilt.
There was also already a high prior of shadiness. The company is run by someone who is close enough in reputation to "known sociopath".
It's actually far more reasonable to assume that OpenAI stole user data to generate a breakthrough. They have an unbelievably high economic motive to do so. And even a low chance that they might be doing this implies catastrophic risk to anyone with valuable knowledge.