As noted in this comment, this might be an instance of being ‘fooled by randomness’, plus a misreading of the Instruct-GPT paper(the “40 contractors” he refers to were likely hired once to help train Instruct-GPT, not tweaking the model on an ongoing basis)
My understanding is that they have contractors working on an ongoing basis, but the number who are employed at any particular time is substantially lower than 40.
As noted in this comment, this might be an instance of being ‘fooled by randomness’, plus a misreading of the Instruct-GPT paper(the “40 contractors” he refers to were likely hired once to help train Instruct-GPT, not tweaking the model on an ongoing basis)
My understanding is that they have contractors working on an ongoing basis, but the number who are employed at any particular time is substantially lower than 40.