I think this is heavily editoralized. if you look at the 3 pages in question that the quotes are pulled from (28-30 in doc, 29-31 in pdf), they appear to be given as examples in pretty boring academic discussions explicating the theories of costly signaling in the context of AI.It also has lines like:
"The system card provides evidence of several kinds of costs that OpenAI was willing to bear in order to release GPT-4 safely.These include the time and financial cost..."
"Returning to our framework of costly signals, OpenAI’s decision to create and publish the GPT4 system card could be considered an example of tying hands as well as reducible costs. By
publishing such a thorough, frank assessment of its model’s shortcomings, OpenAI has to
some extent tied its own hands—creating an expectation that the company will produce and
publish similar risk assessments for major new releases in the future. OpenAI also paid a price ..."
"While the system card itself has been well received among researchers interested in
understanding GPT-4’s risk profile, it appears to have been less successful as a broader signal
of OpenAI’s commitment to safety"
And the conclusion:
"Yet where OpenAI’s attempt at signaling may have been drowned out by other, even more
conspicuous actions taken by the company, Anthropic’s signal may have simply failed to cut
through the noise. By burying the explanation of Claude’s delayed release in the middle of a
long, detailed document posted to the company’s website, Anthropic appears to have ensured
that this signal of its intentions around AI safety has gone largely unnoticed. Taken together,
these two case studies therefore provide further evidence that signaling around AI may be
even more complex than signaling in previous eras."