There was a huge back-and-forth about comments by Yann LeCun that the OpenAI work was just a public-facing stunt and No Big Deal [1]. Suffice to say, there was some dissent about Yann's assessment (comparisons to "less space than a nomad, lame", etc.)

Semi-related, various comments from web-watchers [e.g., 2] about the possibility for these chatbots to replace google search (e.g., redirects to stack overflow could be answered by a code chatbot).

Given the context, it's interesting.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/chatgpt-is-not-particularly-in...

[2] http://scripting.com/2023/01/23.html#a150251

I'd be much more interested in his first contribution. The article says he's merely requested access to the codebase. Which, to his credit, is much better than asking for reams of printouts...

Some tech nerds will care. It's kind of interesting to see, especially for (the now hundreds of thousands) current or former googlers.

ChatGPT is slowly being presented as a Google-killer and it might scare investors.

Bringing him back might reassure them?

Cult of personality.