Uncovering the Mystery of OpenAI’s Interim CEO: Emmett Shear

OpenAI has appointed the former head of Twitch as its interim CEO, a few days after the company ousted its renowned leader Sam Altman. This move has caused significant disruption in the field of artificial intelligence.

Emmett Shear announced his new role Monday morning at X, formerly known as Twitter, while admitting that the “process and communication” surrounding Altman’s firing on Friday was “handled very poorly” and undermined trust in the company.

When it abruptly fired Altman, OpenAI said in an internal review that the 38-year-old “was not consistently honest in his communications” with the company’s board. OpenAI didn’t provide more details, so industry analysts and tech watchers read the tea leaves to try to figure out what happened.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, which has invested billions in the artificial intelligence company, said Monday it would bring Altman and former OpenAI president Greg Brockman — who resigned in protest after Altman was ousted — to lead the tech giant’s new advanced AI research group.

At OpenAI, Shear has promised to shed light on Altman’s departure. In his X post, he promised to hire an independent investigator to look into what led to Altman’s ouster and write a report within 30 days.

WHAT IS SHEAR’S BACKGROUND?

Shear, 40, is a co-founder of the Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch, a social media site known mostly for gaming.

Twitch was originally part of the streaming video site Justin.tv, which Shear and three other tech entrepreneurs founded in 2006. The focus shifted to gaming in 2011, turning the platform into a growing phenomenon and spawning a slew of goodies. -famous streamers. Three years later, Amazon bought the company for about $970 million in cash.

Twitch doesn’t garner as much media attention as other social media companies, but it has come under scrutiny in two cases in recent years when mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Germany were streamed on its platform.

Shear left the company in March. She said this was because of the birth of her now 9-month-old son.

After leaving Twitch, Shear became a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator, the startup incubator that launched Airbnb, DoorDash, and Dropbox. Both Altman and Shear know each other as alumni of startup founders at Y Combinator. Altman later served as president of Y Combinator.

On his LinkedIn profile, Shear says he’s been “founding, growing and managing companies since college” and “has no plans to go back any time soon.” He graduated from Yale University in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

HOW DID HE END UP AT THE OPEN?

OpenAI had initially appointed its CTO Mira Murat as interim CEO on Friday. But he appeared to be one of the signatories to a letter that began circulating early Monday — signed by hundreds of other OpenAI employees — calling for the board’s resignation and Altman’s return.

The Associated Press could not independently confirm that all the signatures were from OpenAI employees. OpenAI’s spokesperson confirmed that the board has received a letter, which also stated that the board had replaced Murat against the company’s interest.

In his X post, Shear wrote that he received a call offering him a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to become interim CEO of San Francisco-based OpenAI. He said the company’s board “shared the situation” with him and asked him for the role. He quickly agreed.

“I took this job because I believe OpenAI is one of the most important companies in existence today,” he wrote.

Shear said he spent most of Sunday “drinking from the fire hose as much as possible” speaking to the board, employees and a small number of OpenAI’s partners.

Investors, on the other hand, are trying to stabilize the situation. In a message to X early Monday morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he was “very excited” to bring on Altman and Brockman and was “looking forward to getting to know” OpenAI’s new leadership team.

Shear was at one point an intern at Microsoft, although from a post he made on X in July, it doesn’t seem like he enjoyed his time at the company. In response to a post by user X that said “the worst type of demon would be one that pays you just a little bit every time you destroy yourself a little bit,” Shear replied, “When I was interning for Microsoft, every paycheck felt like I was getting paid for a small piece in the mail of my soul.”

WHAT DOES SHEAR SAY ABOUT ALTMAN’S DEPARTURE?

In his X post, Shear said he reviewed OpenAI’s reasons for the changes before he took the job.

“The government did not (star) not (star) remove Sam because of any specific security disagreement, their reasoning was completely different than that,” he wrote.

“I’m not crazy enough to take on this job without disk support to monetize our awesome models,” he said, referring to the company’s popular AI tools like ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E.

“I have nothing but respect for what Sam and the entire OpenAI team have built,” he said. “It’s not just an incredible research project and software product, it’s an incredible company. I’m here because I know it and I want to do everything I can to protect it and grow it.”

WHAT IS SHEAR TRYING TO DO?

Shear said he wants to accomplish three things in the next 30 days.

In addition to hiring an independent investigator to “create a full report” on what happened, Shear said he wants to continue talking with stakeholders and revamp the company’s management and leadership teams in light of recent departures.

After that, he said he would “push for changes in the organization – even calling for significant management changes if necessary.”

“The stability and success of OpenAI are too important to allow turmoil to disrupt them in this way,” he said.

WHAT IS SHEAR’S APPROACH TO AI?

In a June podcast, Shear said he’s optimistic about technology in general, but has serious concerns about AI’s path toward something “much smarter than us” that sets itself a goal that puts humans at risk. As an engineer, he said his approach would be to build AI systems on a small and incremental scale.

“If there’s a world where we survive … where we build AI smarter than humans and survive, it’s because we built smaller AIs and actually had as many intelligent humans as we could work with and take the problem seriously,” Shear said in June .

When asked by an X user on Monday what his stance was on AI security, Shear replied, “It’s important.”