If the rumor is true presumably the thinking is “my proof of concept neural network learned basic math problems. When I scale it up and refine the concept it will be smarter than I am.”

The researcher could have believed this even if it isn’t true.

Oh it’s a TURBO version you say? Is that a technical term? I never said whatever you seem to think I said.

GPT 3.5 turbo was released on March 1 2023, for what it’s worth. Which makes it not a very old model.