alt Hacker NewsMy 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.
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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."
Im just curious what gives you an idea Musk and his cronies are actually intelligent enough to do this.
if this was the case Musk himself would be homeless and not “richest” person on earth
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.