The news of Strawberry's accelerated development, coupled with the precarious financial situation of OpenAI, gives us much reason to worry. In order to secure funding, the company may be rushing a problem without proper safeguards, and could unleash the most powerful AI model the world has yet seen with little warning. We must scrutinize OpenAI's practices closely, as even former employees say that safety has taken a backseat to profit.
AI is facing a reckoning, though one regarding its deficiencies as opposed to its potentially life-altering abilities. The truth is that AI has become very good at producing garbage, and significant investment is needed to get it past this hump, according to projections. The claims of AGI posing an existential risk are much exaggerated, and we need to keep pushing forward with new products, like Strawberry, that get us closer to AI being useful for humanity at large.