The speaker previously believed publishing AGI research would reduce a developer's lead time by allowing competitors to catch up more quickly.

“and burn down their lead time over everybody else and spend that lead on making it safe and then proceed and so if you're like publishing all your research then there's less lead time because your competitors are going to be close behind you um so and other reasons too but that's like one reason why i think historically people such as myself have been like pro pro secrecy even another reason of course is obviously don't want rivals to be stealing your stuff um”