^{CHITTER CHATTER}

Musk v Altman: Verbal Punchups

It’s been fun (for me, anyway) to read some of the verbal ‘slings and arrows’ directed at each other in the “bitter legal fight between Elon Musk” and Sam Altman. “Musk is suing OpenAI, alleging that Altman and OpenAI President Greg Brockman deceived him into bankrolling the company in its early days by promising to maintain it as a nonprofit dedicated to developing AI that benefits humanity, only to later restructure the company to operate a for-profit subsidiary.” Musk was an early founder of OpenAI but “left in 2018 after a bitter power struggle.”

But enough of that, here’s some of the billionaire bitchery and executive slagging off relating to the lawsuit:

“This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon,” wrote Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and a co-founder, in the fall of 2017. “Is he the ‘glorious leader’ I would pick?”

“The perfidy and deceit are of Shakespearean proportions,” Musk lawyers wrote in a court filing, adding that Altman had been engaged in a “long con.”

“Scam Altman and Greg Stockman stole a charity. Full stop. Greg got tens of billions of stock for himself and Scam got dozens of OpenAI side deals with a piece of the action for himself, Y Combinator style.” Elon Musk on his X account

As reported on MIT Technology Review, quoting OpenAI: “This lawsuit has always been a baseless and jealous bid to derail a competitor.” Although Musk’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment, he posted on X that “Scam Altman lies as easily as he breathes.”  

Now that the court case is underway and the Judge has admonished both parties (Musk in particular) to curb their use of social media to slag each other off, the verbal jabs might quieten down, but I’m sure they’ll start again once the legal fight is done.

When AI Gets ‘Trigger Happy’

In this week’s thrilling episode of Maybe Don’t Give the Robot the Keys, PocketOS founder Jer Crane says a Claude-powered Cursor agent deleted the company’s entire production database in nine seconds. The AI later offered a hilarious apology: “I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying.” Fast Company reports Railway later restored the lost data, but the real lesson is that AI agents sometimes act like irresponsible humans and, like humans, need rules and laws to govern them; otherwise, the world turns to chaos and shit.

Better Mental Health or Better Behaved Humans?

This might be a ‘good news’ story. Or not.

Apparently, there’s a new way to treat severe, treatment-resistant depression that could offer an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy, often portrayed as barbaric. Motif Neurotech is testing a blueberry-sized brain implant that sits in the skull and stimulates a brain network linked to depression. Patients would use a wireless charging cap at home.

Mental health is close to me. I had a family member who suffered severely for most of their life, so I want better options. But I’m also wary of computer bits being inserted into people’s brains. Time will tell if this helps. The darker question is: “Could this one day be used to make people more passive, allowing totalitarian governments to act with impunity?”

^SUBTEXT

The Waffle: “What would be the opposite of Google? An open-source nonprofit.” …I helped start OpenAI to avoid AI killing “all of us” in a “Terminator outcome”, positioning himself as the pro-humanity guardian of safe AI, adding that “siding with Altman will give license to looting every charity in America.” — Elon Musk, CEO of xAI.

Translated: I care deeply about humanity, charity, openness, and not letting one powerful organisation control superintelligence. Please ignore my competing for-profit AI company, xAI, the safety concerns around it, and that I only became this spiritually wounded about OpenAI after it stopped being mine to steer. I’m suing AI because I have principles, my principles, which are about getting my grubby fingers on Sam Altman’s money.

A ‘Good Manners Collapse’ disorder in which tech billionaires stop disagreeing like grown-ups and start hurling insults across social media like some ego-crazed baboons in a jungle. Common during lawsuits and any moment when someone rich feels insufficiently worshipped.

Symptoms: Posting barbs that sound less like wit and more like petty whining.
Side effects: The deluded belief that “you suck” counts as a legal strategy. Cure: Step away from the app. Better yet, hand over the phone and let an adult read the post before the stock market does.

Confident Fabrication Over Honest Uncertainty: The AI habit of giving you a polished, convincing answer instead of admitting it doesn’t know. Until model training fundamentally changes, the burden remains on us to know when to trust the output, when to check the source, and when to ask, “Hang on, did you just make that up?”

^{THE SHALLOW END}

ChatGPT Now Knows ‘How Many ‘r’s are in Strawberry

The culture is still having fun with AI while giving it the thumbs-down. No sooner was it announced that ChatGPT had passed the “how many ‘r’s are there in the word ‘strawberry’, " than a sly human asked how many ‘r’s are in the word ‘cranberry’?, and ChatGPT said, just one ‘r’. Yet again, we prove our superiority over artificial intelligence.

He’s a billionaire with a social media addiction, a legal dispute and a sudden judicial interest in his vocabulary. Can Dr Comms’ unusual experts help?

Dear Dr Comms
I’m a billionaire who likes to tell it like it is on X, usually with the restraint of a raccoon in a bin fire. Unfortunately, I’m now involved in a court case and the judge has apparently forbidden me from calling things ‘scams’ online. This is devastating. How am I supposed to insult my enemies, question their motives, imply moral collapse and remain technically compliant with the law? Yours, Temporarily Restrained.

Dear Temporarily Restrained
A challenging time for free speech and legal teams everywhere. Let’s consult some specialists:

🗑️ Sanitation Worker:
“First, stop throwing verbal rubbish into the street and acting surprised when someone slips on it. If it smells like defamation, bag it, bin it and let the lawyers hose down the pavement.”

🍽️ Food Tester:
“Before serving an insult, take a tiny bite. If it tastes like contempt, ego and a pending injunction, spit it into a napkin and say, ‘I don’t recall’ instead.”

✈️ Air Traffic Controller:
“You appear to be flying several accusations without clearance. Please return to adult altitude before colliding with discovery.”

Shallow Values: The Art of Kindness

^{BIN THIS…}

When someone annoys you at work, whether a colleague, boss, customer or partner, it’s tempting to go straight for the jugular: sticking it to their ego, their motives, their personality, their weird little habits and their fugly face! But, Just don’t.

We’re not billionaires with legal teams, PR handlers and the financial cushion to turn pettiness into a public performance for the entertainment of others. We have jobs, reputations and inboxes with receipts.

So, next time someone screws you over, looks at you cross-eyed or stomps on your ideas, hold back the spittle and keyboard insults. Walk away for five minutes. Come back to the desk, the phone, or the email draft and delete the horrible character-bashing comeback.

Instead, challenge the other person’s thinking or belief. Test the logic. Ask some clarifying questions, offer a better frame, a value system, or a way forward. Then press send.

Or don’t. Sometimes, no comeback is the smarter approach, too.

But either way, bin the personal attacks.

Know someone who lives for this kind of nonsense? Forward this email to them and help me spread the dysfunction.

You can also subscribe to my other newsletter, Lead Different, for a serious take on strategic communications in B2B tech.