As the storm rages on at OpenAI following the dismissal of Sam Altam, the Board of Directors has appointed a new CEO in Emmett Shear. He is the former CEO of Twitch, where he spent 11 years
Emmett Shear takes the helm at OpenAI
Since Sam Altman was ousted as CEO by OpenAI’s Board of Directors, each day brings more news. Today, we learn that Emmett Shear has been appointed to head up the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind chatbot ChatGPT.
This is a man accustomed to positions of high responsibility, as he is none other than the former CEO of streaming platform Twitch, from which he resigned last March after 11 years. Similar arguments were reported by a source close to the matter to our colleagues at Bloomberg:
“A computer scientist who has spent more than a decade building Twitch into one of the world’s most successful video platforms, Shear is considered to have the clout to lead a major engineering group. “
Shear is also said to have won over the board thanks to his stance on AI, acknowledging last September, for example, that more measured progress was needed in this sector :
“We can’t learn to build safe AI without experimenting, and we can’t experiment without making progress, but we probably shouldn’t go full speed ahead either. “
OpenAI in turmoil
This news comes as OpenAI’s investors, led by Microsoft, Thrive Capital and Tiger Global Management, lobbied the board this weekend in an attempt to rehabilitate Sam Altman. This appointment may be seen as a refusal to accede to their request, while the dismissal of the ex-CEO caused strong reactions within the company.
Mira Murati, the company’s CTO who had been appointed interim CEO until a definitive solution could be found, ended up occupying her new position for only two days.
At the time of writing, no comment has yet been made by the various parties involved, be it Mira Murati, OpenAI or Emmett Shear.
For his part, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others who had left OpenAI would be heading up a new AI research team at Microsoft. More on this in a forthcoming article:
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett…
– Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 20, 2023
