That's not necessarily a bad thing.

> with all the AI resarchers rejected for being bad researchers.

TBF, I've heard the team at xai called "bunch of amateurs" by people who've previously worked (with them) at big labs. For a bunch of amateurs, they've caught up with SotA just fine.

Turns out a bunch of amateurs will outperform experts when the experts are forced to spend 80% of their effort ensuring their models don’t accidentally say factual yet impolite things or make any users have big feelings.

I thought it's really just one guy who does the Nous aesthetic?

Doing a good job if people think it’s a whole team