Comment by dmix

No there was legit internal push back about releasing GPT2. The lady on the OpenAI board who led the effort to coup Sam spoke about it in an interview that she and others were part of a group that strongly pushed against it because it was dangerous. But Sam ignored them which started their "Sam isn't listening" thing which built up over time with other grievances.

Don't underestimate the influence of the 'safety' people within OpenAI.

That plus people always invent this excuse that there's some secret money/marketing motive behind everything they don't understand, when reality is usually a lot simpler. These companies just keep things generally mysterious and the public will fill in the blanks with hype.