It's because moving forward is hard, but moving backward when you know what the space of answers is, is much easier.
Once you know that OpenAI gets a certain set of results with roughly technology X, it's much easier to recreate that work than to do it in the first place.
This is true of most technology. Inventing the telephone is something, but if you told a competent engineer the basic idea, they'd be able to do it 50 years earlier no problem.
Same with flight. There are some really tricky problems with counter-intuitive answers (like how stalls work and how turning should work; which still mess up new pilots today). The space of possible answers is huge, and even the questions themselves are very unclear. It took the Wright brothers years of experiments to understand that they were stalling their wing. But once you have the basic questions and their rough answers, any amateur can build a plane today in their shed.
I agree with your overall point, but I don't think that we'd be able to get the telephone 50 years earlier because of how many other industries had to align to allow for its invention. Insulated wire didn't readily or cheaply come in spools until after the telegraph in the 1840's. The telephone was in 1876 so 50 years earlier was 1826.
You didn't mention it explicitly but I think the morale factor is also huge. Once you know it's possible, it does away with all those fears of wasted nights/weekends/resources/etc for something that might not actually be possible.
Once you know that OpenAI gets a certain set of results with roughly technology X, it's much easier to recreate that work than to do it in the first place.
This is true of most technology. Inventing the telephone is something, but if you told a competent engineer the basic idea, they'd be able to do it 50 years earlier no problem.
Same with flight. There are some really tricky problems with counter-intuitive answers (like how stalls work and how turning should work; which still mess up new pilots today). The space of possible answers is huge, and even the questions themselves are very unclear. It took the Wright brothers years of experiments to understand that they were stalling their wing. But once you have the basic questions and their rough answers, any amateur can build a plane today in their shed.