But there's a bunch of people already in this thread calling that stuff unfounded speculation (which I disagree with), and my point is that even if that specific thing isn't true, OA's behavior here is obviously awful.
If they're going to try to beat researchers to discoveries like this it disincentives researchers to talk about their progress publicly, and basically breaks the ecosystem of scientific cooperation / discovery. It's also immoral.
Yep. The most uncharitable view of this might be: they stole the work of researchers to build their models, and now they're using said models to steal the proceeds of future work, too.
If they're going to try to beat researchers to discoveries like this it disincentives researchers to talk about their progress publicly, and basically breaks the ecosystem of scientific cooperation / discovery. It's also immoral.