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.
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.
Isn't this blackmail?
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!
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.
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."
Really comes down to what you think his primary motivation is and what are just benefits.
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.