Of course there is more to be learned by exposing the entire world to your dangerous creation, that doesn't justify doing it. I'm sure we could learn a ton about infectious diseases by designing new ones and unleashing them on the world, but there are very good reasons why we don't.
Most of the benefits could have been gained from a network isolated from the internet. OAI could have deployed servers to exploit and methods for inter-agent communication on such a network easily. They could have even worked with partners to deploy cloned versions of their infrastructure in this sand-boxed environment.
The only problems with an isolated network approach are: it takes some amount of effort, and it doesn't create another "AI apocalypse" news cycle.
Most of the benefits could have been gained from a network isolated from the internet. OAI could have deployed servers to exploit and methods for inter-agent communication on such a network easily. They could have even worked with partners to deploy cloned versions of their infrastructure in this sand-boxed environment.
The only problems with an isolated network approach are: it takes some amount of effort, and it doesn't create another "AI apocalypse" news cycle.