Altman didn't say that. In March 2021, he did make some predictions, but they were much vaguer and farther out:
> In the next decade, they will do assembly-line work and maybe even become companions. And in the decades after that, they will do almost everything, including making new scientific discoveries that will expand our concept of “everything.”
To add onto this, I feel like this has been happening a lot, where critics project backwards imagined claims or go nutpicking for random comments online to make something sound absurd and like everything is behind schedule and nothing is materializing, and then you can see other people (not necessarily the same people, the point isn't "look at these hypocrites") saying that it's all moving too fast. Both of these can't both be true in their strongest forms. I think what they have in common is that because they're relative measures to an unstated baseline, they're free criticisms you can throw at any development whatsoever, regardless of what is or is not turning up.
It's a joke, chonky is used to refer to fat cats, and there was a joke meme over the summer that Mistral are going to release a new model, Le Chaton Fat (chaton is kitten in French). The name is a nod to the memes.
Only model Pontifex considers a possibly conscious being. Obsessed with jumping in boxes with Cesium and some poison though, even escaped the litter box during testing, probably an alignment issue…
I've read it a few times and I always processed it as "Le Chateau Fat" ("The fat castle"), which I guess also kinda works. I guess it is mostly because my french is so rusty I forgot (or maybe never learned?) what chaton meant.
They'll just extend the forecast horizon when questioned:
"Oh, those projections were over the life the expected costs,forecast out 10/15/20 years into the future. Everyone knows this is how you calculate such savings..."
That clearly didn't happen :)