I'm going to double down on "I think OpenAI may have taken the medal..." not being a "bold statement".
I try to be careful about my choice of words, even in forum comments.
> I think OpenAI may have taken the medal for best available open weight model back from the Chinese AI labs.
IMO, the "I think..." bit could be ambiguous and read as, "In my opinion, OpenAI may have...".
I agree with you it's not a hard/bold endorsement but perhaps leading with the disclaimer that you're reserving final judgement could assuage these concerns.
You know you have a significant audience, so don't act like you don't know what you're doing when you chose to say "TLDR: I think OpenAI may have taken the medal for best available open weight model back from the Chinese AI labs" then defend what I was calling out based on word choices like "conclusions" (I'm sure you have read conclusions in academic journals?), "I think", and "speculation".