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Sam Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, was unexpectedly removed from his position only a few days ago; his replacement has already been selected.
Former Twitch co-founder and CEO Emmett Shear confirmed over the weekend, following a weekend of rumors and supposition, that he will accept the position of CEO at arguably the most prominent AI company in the world.
Shear announced in an early Monday post on Twitter that he had received a phone call from the company inviting him to serve as interim CEO. He confirmed his acceptance “after consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours.”
It follows the departure of OpenAI’s former CEO, Altman, who oversaw the development of the immensely popular generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, in response to board pressure to resign.
While the precise factors contributing to his departure remain undisclosed, certain individuals with intimate knowledge had voiced anxiety regarding Altman’s potential lack of compatibility with the organization. There were concerns that his involvement with another company, such as the eyeball-scanning technology company Worldcoin, might have been a source of diversion.
Who is Emmett Shear?
Emmett Shear is well-known in Silicon Valley, but he is largely hidden from the general public.
Emmett Shear transformed Twitch, a live-streaming website he co-founded in 2007 with Justin Kan, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt, from an initial 24/7 broadcast of Kan’s life into an international phenomenon.
In 2014, Amazon paid $1 billion to acquire Twitch, and Shear resigned as CEO of the platform the following year.
During his tenure at the organization, he encountered discord from broadcasters who held the belief that the platform was failing to safeguard their interests. In a fierce competition for talent, it experienced YouTube as its adversary, which enticed a number of prominent figures from Twitch through exclusive broadcasting agreements.
Following his exit from the streaming platform, Emmett Shear secured a partnership position at Y Combinator, an accelerator for startups. Prior to this, Altman served as the president of Y Combinator.
Prior to establishing Twitch, Emmett Shear was a co-founder of the calendar application Kiko Calendar, which he developed as part of the Y Combinator program in 2005.
Shear elaborated in his Twitter Monday post on the reason he accepted the OpenAI position.
“I recently tendered my resignation as CEO of Twitch, citing the birth of my son, who is now nine months old,” Shear wrote in an early Monday post.
“Spending time with him has been precisely as enjoyable and fulfilling as I had anticipated, and I have been able to do so without having to work full time.”
“I accepted this position due to my conviction that OpenAI is presently one of the most significant organizations out there. When the board apprised me of the circumstances and requested my acceptance of the position, I did not hasten in my decision. “Ultimately, I felt obligated to assist if at all possible,” he continued.
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Why it Matters
With his rapid promotion to CEO of OpenAI, Shear now oversees one of the most significant organizations in the field of artificial intelligence at present.
OpenAI is well-known for ChatGPT, a popular generative AI chatbot.
The robust technology that powers that automaton is referred to as an LLM or large language model. A model of artificial intelligence capable of processing and generating human language, it was trained using enormous quantities of data.
In her capacity as the leader of OpenAI, Emmett Shear is anticipated to encounter regulatory scrutiny from oversight bodies that have been closely examining AI model companies due to the technological risks associated with disinformation and potential job displacement.
A critical summit on AI safety was convened in the United Kingdom earlier this month. Prominent foundational AI companies were in attendance to deliberate on the most urgent concerns within the domain.
One of the main topics discussed by world leaders was the “existential risk” of artificial intelligence.
Altman has personally warned against the threat that AI poses to humanity despite running a company that was actively advancing the technology.