Comment by overgard
22 days ago
My suspicion is that winning might have been a secondary goal. When OpenAI goes to IPO, all the testimony of former executives about Altman's behavior is going to be in the public record. A lot of that testimony makes OpenAI sound very chaotic and poorly run. That could prevent large institutional investors from wanting to take the risk.
Musk texted OpenAI's Brockman about a settlement two days before trial.
So I take that to mean Musk wanted a settlement as primary goal, and that the threat to OpenAI's reputation was just an (unsuccessful) means to get what he wanted. That isn't to say it wasn't personal for Musk, just that he would have preferred to have gotten paid.
As to Musk texting "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be" when the settlement offer was turned down, while I'd agree there were a ton of super embarrassing details that came out I don't think Musk was successful in making them more hated than even he is. I don't even think this secondary goal was successful, even though there were a ton of juicy bits.
It's hard to know without knowing the terms of the settlement. It could have easily been something he knew OpenAI would find to be unacceptable.
I think regardless it would be extremely hard for him to make people hate Altman et al. more than himself. Altman's flaws are more subtle and require paying attention to a pattern of behavior. Musk has beem pure cringe for 5+ years now.
It seems like the real sour grapes are over the fact they wouldn't let him run OpenAI. If he cared about a payday, ironically, he probably would have had more success because he would have brought this suit sooner.
My friend and I went to play poker this weekend. Demis Hassabis was there. I whispered to him “what the hell, that’s Demis Hassabis”!
My friend had no idea who he was. My friend doesn’t work in tech but he’s in his late 20s and we are both British so I was quite surprised. My guess is most of the world has no idea who these people are, despite their influence they are very niche celebrities.
Maybe Sam is more famous but I’d guess ~no one knows Greg Brockman.
So I find “most hated men in America” quite dramatic!
> "By the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. If you insist, so it will be"
Isn't this blackmail?
I think courts would likely see it as trash talk. In this trial, the judge wouldn't let the jury see it, given settlement discussions are not allowed into evidence.
>A lot of that testimony makes OpenAI sound very chaotic and poorly run. That could prevent large institutional investors from wanting to take the risk.
Judging by the sheer number of journalistic investigations into OpenAI and the number of accounts of former employees, I would have expected that OpenAI being chaotic and poorly run is common knowledge by now and the lawsuit doesn't add much more to it.
It adds detail
"Risk".... "AI".... have you SEEN the stock market???
It's not a bad theory, but I think you're making the logical man's mistake of trying to ascribe a lot of intelligence and strategy to a move because on the surface it's irrational. Not every villain's move is a mysterious Xanatos gambit. Sometimes billionaire assholes just do dumb stuff because they can and/or because they're full of small-minded hatred.
Sometimes rich, powerful people do stuff that's irrational. When you see Trump attack Iran and you think "this doesn't appear to make sense," you can reason "there must have been secret intelligence proving that Iran was about to nuke Israel because otherwise it was a stupid move," or you can reason "it didn't make sense because it was a stupid move."
I think this depends on point of view. I do think much of this comes down to sour grapes that they didn't let Elon control OpenAI, and this is the wedge he chose to retaliate. Would he have sour grapes if he didn't want to win the AI race himself?
Really comes down to what you think his primary motivation is and what are just benefits.
When Musk signed on to help OpenAI initially, he claimed it was to set up guardrails so AI would be aligned with the best interests of humans.
After OpenAI went for-profit and China became a significant AI powerhouse, he no longer cares about safety and just insists that his team get “there “ (whatever the destination is) before “they” do. I’m not so certain he has a coherent belief system, but is probably further into AI psychosis or paranoid delusions than we want to believe.
Terrible options for a person with some of the most wealth in the tech world and perhaps just as influential, given that he effectively ensured Trump won in 2024, had direct foreign policy comms with Putin post-2022, controls the only cost-effective gateway to space, was given the keys to destroy his own regulators, is impregnating dozens of women (but perhaps not paying for those kids), etc.
That's fair although I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was a rational move. I think if he had won, it might have actually been worse for him (who knows what the collateral damage to the AI bubble would have been). I just think his goal was mostly to do as much harm as possible to people he clearly hates.
I think you're being too generous, one of the big take aways from the trial was that Musk's other AI effort - xAI is a total shit show, and that most of the experts here don't think Musk understands how to run an AI lab. Which is a problem since Musk wants to IPO SpaceX with a story about AI. Admittedly there's been lots of other news that also embarases him in this area.
dump it on retail, thats the plan with one less step
if this was the case Musk himself would be homeless and not “richest” person on earth
Im just curious what gives you an idea Musk and his cronies are actually intelligent enough to do this.