Former Twitch leader becomes new head of OpenAI
OpenAI’s board hired former Twitch executive Emmett Shear as chief executive, ignoring calls from investors to reinstate ousted Sam Altman.
Earlier this year, Shear stepped down as CEO of game streaming company Twitch. He won OpenAI’s favor because he recognized the threat posed by AI, one Bloomberg source said. A computer scientist who spent more than a decade building Twitch into one of the most successful video platforms in the world, Shire is considered the man to lead a large engineering team.
The decision to hire Shear came in defiance of investors led by Microsoft and Thrive Capital, who had called for the board to resign and wanted Altman back.
Sam Altman will not return, despite the efforts of Microsoft and other investors.
Another Bloomberg source said members of the San Francisco startup’s board of directors have approached at least two prominent tech company executives about leading OpenAI.
Representatives for OpenAI and Emmet Shear did not respond to requests for comment. OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who orchestrated Altman’s dismissal, told employees that Altman would not return.
Elon Musk has said that the potential dangers of advanced artificial intelligence are so great that OpenAI must reveal the reason for the dismissal of CEO Sam Altman .
