Only OpenAI and its CEO know the full details on GPT-4's sizes so that's entirely possible. But since it's an internal secret, there's nothing compelling him to

Only OpenAI and its CEO know the full details on GPT-4's sizes so that's entirely possible. But since it's an internal secret, there's nothing compelling him to tell the truth. For all we know, he has internal data backing up the opposite of the claim but is making this claim so as to discourage potential competitors from spending the money training an even bigger and competitive ML model. Sending potential competitors off on a wide goose chase that, when pushed, he can just say "oh our internal data (that no one outside of a trusted few have seen) said otherwise". I have no idea if sama is such a person, but you must admit that the possibility exists.