OpenAI has been hit by dramatic executive changes since Friday, and the appointment of an interim CEO is only adding fuel to the fire.
Emmett Shear, co-founder of streaming platform Twitch, said early Monday that he had been named interim CEO of the artificial intelligence company. Since leaving Twitch in March, Shear has taken a freewheeling approach to social media, criticizing microsoftweighing in on gender politics and even participating in a discussion about OpenAI’s firing of Sam Altman before his own appointment.
Shear replaced Altman, who was ousted by the company’s board of directors on Friday. Altman was hired on Monday by Microsoft, which has a partnership with OpenAI, and more than 700 of OpenAI’s 770 employees have threatened to leave and join Microsoft unless OpenAI’s board of directors resigns and Altman is reinstated.
Shear said in March that he retired from Twitch to spend time with his newborn son, but since moving on, he has been a part-time partner at the venture capital firm Y Combinator, which Altman led as CEO less than a year ago. decade. Shear also previously benefited from Y Combinator’s first round of funding in 2005, when he was still in college and successfully submitted a calendar application, which he then sold. Shear later co-founded Twitch, originally a one-man live streaming platform called Justin.tv, and served as its CEO for 12 years.
Shear’s appointment as interim CEO of OpenAI has already sparked some criticism from technologists and commentators, who have questioned the due diligence involved in the appointment, given his presence on social media.
As of Monday, Shear’s bio on X lists his role at OpenAI. Just hours before, his bio read: “Super opinionated about the most random s**t.” Shear’s followers on X have also doubled since he announced his new position, currently standing at almost 74,000.
Shear has posted more than 10,000 times on made and published. Most of his posts have been responses and, within those responses, some of his posts. topics – such as “rape fantasies/non-consent” and role of CEOswhich he described as “very automatable,” have attracted attention online.
Many of Shear’s 10,000 posts over the past year respond to people raising questions and observations about social and technological issues, including topics such as sex and dating, artificial intelligence, social justice and the tech industry. Shear’s posts on X received relatively little attention before last week.
In his post announcing his new role, Shear wrote: “I took this job because I believe OpenAI is one of the most important companies out there today.” He said he had spent the day speaking to OpenAI board members, investors and employees and wrote: “And it is clear that the process and communications around Sam’s dismissal have been very poorly handled, seriously damaging our trust.”
Shear posted on X about people involved in OpenAI just days before becoming its interim leader. On Friday, the day Altman was ousted, Shear responded to a meme about OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and board member, who was involved in the decision to oust Altman and then he apologized. The meme described Sutskever as a “ruthless Machiavelli” who planned a coup at OpenAI. Shear responded, in part: “Haters do the best marketing.”
One day before, published shear apparently in agreement with a New Statesman article that suggested automating CEOs – replacing their jobs with automated tools. “Most CEO work (and most executive jobs) are highly automatable. Of course, there are occasional key decisions that cannot be replaced,” he wrote. “Of course, that means you can’t really ‘replace’ the CEO, but I think we will see widely automated management, leading to flatter, more dynamic organizations.”
Cut even responded what parts of a CEO’s job do you think could be automated, writing: “Communication, problem and opportunity detection, talent identification, constructive feedback.” Responding to a claim that a CEO is the “human embodiment” of a brand for customers, investors and employees, Shear dropped out. a link to a popular Twitch V-Tuber: a 3D digitized avatar operated by a real person.
Previously, Shear participated in X with people who are formulating thought experiments about AI. In the responses to A poll Aimed at people in the AI community (many people, both inside and outside the tech industry, have been interested in publishing about the developing technology), Shear wrote that “People aren’t afraid enough of getting their paper cut.”
The term “paper cut” refers to theories that AI is destroying humanity. In the discussion that followed, shear wrote“The Nazis were very evil, but I’d rather see real Nazis take over the world forever than flip a coin at the end of all value.”
The question of AI safety, the public Monday is “important.”
