I don't think it's a fair assessment as many researchers are disappointed that the model wasn't released. And I'm pretty sure they do understand the model size

I don't think it's a fair assessment as many researchers are disappointed that the model wasn't released. And I'm pretty sure they do understand the model size concerns. Running inference on this massive model would be a really interesting challenge for people working on model compression and pruning as well as those working on low memory training. New challenges are always a good thing for research. Personally, I just wish it was easier to get an access to their API. I have an experiment in mind that I can't wait to try.