Yes, people turned a blind eye towards OpenAI because they were supposedly an “open” non-profit company working towards the benefit of humanity. They got tons of top talent and investment because of this. The crazy part is that they knew they weren’t gonna keep it non-profit based on the internal chat revealed in Elon Musk’s lawsuit. They duped the whole world and now just trying to make as much money as possible.
In my opinion, if they were to release these models openly and everyone had equal opportunity to benefit from their research (just like the previous research their current stuff is based on), they could be excused but this for-profit business model is the main problem.