1. It does sure seem like this licensing regime would limit the entrance of new players into the AGI market quite a bit, which would probably increase OpenAIs profits a bunch.
2. However, it also makes sense from a safety perspective to reduce the number of players, since that enables more coordination and reduces race-dynamics
3. OpenAI itself would likely be hit pretty hard by these regulations, though if they are the ones driving the progress they might be able to get some privileged position in the law-making process that leaves them more free than competitors
4. OpenAI hasn't made any kind of costly signal or promise that shows they really care about this kind of regulation, though it's unclear what a good promise or costly signal would be. "We would join any nationalized AGI project" would be something, though I also think it's pretty plausibly a quite bad idea.
5. Altman doesn't have any equity in OpenAI, though my sense is he would still end up extremely powerful and somehow get a ton of resources if OpenAI ends up ahead in the AGI race (before the AGI causes catastrophe that is).
I think this explains the current dynamics, right? If Altman had serious equity in OpenAI, then he'd be concerned about turning a profit or making the next GPT-x. But this is not the case and now he is playing the bureaucracy game as it is the one that will give him power and leverage.