I realize this is going to get voted down, but piece reads like a Trumpism "we have great AI, trust me, you would not believe, if you could see what we're doing".
I don't think you get to claim PR credit for advances in ML unless you publish. In general, for R&D, IMHO, you need to publish. There's product R&D, and there's fundamental R&D. If you make an advancement in something fundamental, but that helps your product, then publish it. If it is specific to your product only and can't be transferred elsewhere, then maybe it's ok to keep it secret.
Apple and Google's competitive advantage now arises from scale and path dependency. I think they need to let go of this idea that somehow they derive a competitive advantage by keeping these things secret. The Open AI community is going to advance at an accelerated rate regardless and IMHO, it's better to be part of it than to be seen as a kind of parasite that consumes public R&D, but doesn't give back improvements.
No, if everyone can benefit, that, IMHO, is precisely why it should be contributed back to the community. If you want a selfish altruistic reason to do it, well the likely improvements that the external community will make will benefit you, including those contributions made by your competitors.
I think a culture of secrecy yields local optima. Only if you believe (and is true) your company has unique geniuses that can't benefit from other people reviewing their science will secrecy benefit you.
IMHO, only research that is useless to your competitors is research to keep secret in the sense that it is too specific to your own proprietary dependencies.
I don't think you get to claim PR credit for advances in ML unless you publish. In general, for R&D, IMHO, you need to publish. There's product R&D, and there's fundamental R&D. If you make an advancement in something fundamental, but that helps your product, then publish it. If it is specific to your product only and can't be transferred elsewhere, then maybe it's ok to keep it secret.
Apple and Google's competitive advantage now arises from scale and path dependency. I think they need to let go of this idea that somehow they derive a competitive advantage by keeping these things secret. The Open AI community is going to advance at an accelerated rate regardless and IMHO, it's better to be part of it than to be seen as a kind of parasite that consumes public R&D, but doesn't give back improvements.