Sam Altman, the recently fired CEO of OpenAI, will not be returning to his position despite talks of rehiring in the board.
Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and board director, stated in the report that Emmett Shear, the co-founder of the video streaming site Twitch, will step in as the interim CEO.
This makes three CEOs in three days as the company’s chief technology officer Mira Murati, was previously appointed as the interim CEO right after Altman’s ouster.
Murati had planned to bring back Sam Altman and former president and chairman Greg Brockman back to the team, reports Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance. Brockman had resigned soon after Altman was let go over the weekend.
So, here's what happened at OpenAI tonight. Mira planned to hire Sam and Greg back. She turned Team Sam over past couple of days. Idea was to force board to fire everyone, which they figured the board would not do. Board went into total silence. Found their own CEO Emmett Shear
— Ashlee Vance (@ashleevance) November 20, 2023
Murati’s idea had been to force the board to fire everyone, which did not seem plausible. The board reportedly went into radio silence and found its new CEO Emmett Shear all of a sudden. The board had not been communicating with anyone during this time. Microsoft was not in favor of this outcome.
Recognized as a vocal advocate for the safety aspect of AI discussions, Shear has expressed his views on the existential risks, emphasizing that they should instill a profound sense of concern. Earlier this year, in an interview, he likened navigating AI safety discussions on X (formerly known as Twitter) to managing “the creation of an alien god.”
While doubling down on Altman’s removal over the weekend, OpenAI’s unusually organized board, composed of Sutskever, safety experts, AI researchers, and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo made a rapid search for his replacement, turning to Shear, reported Forbes.
Shear co-founded Twitch in 2011 and successfully sold the streaming video service to Amazon for $970 million in 2014. He remained as its CEO until March of the current year. From April onward, he has served as a part-time partner at Y Combinator, the startup accelerator previously led by Altman.
Notably, one of Shear’s co-founders at Twitch, Kyle Vogt, resigned as CEO of the challenged robotaxi company Cruise earlier on the same Sunday.
Shear stepped down as the CEO of Twitch earlier this year and was able to win over OpenAI’s board due to his acknowledgment of the existential threat of AI.
