Sam Altman’s Attempt to Return as OpenAI CEO Fails as Board Turns to ex-Twitch CEO

By EditorCS On Nov 20, 2023

Shear cofounded livestreaming platform Twitch, which offered to Amazon for almost $1 billion in 2014. He stepped down as CEO in March, ending a 16 yr run at Twitch, citing the start of his first youngster. Shear moved in among the similar Silicon Valley circles because the CEO whose footwear he should now fill. In 2011, Shear and Altman each had been named part-time companions on the similar time for the startup incubator Y Combinator, which Altman afterward went on to steer.

Shear is a self-described techno-optimist, however has expressed deep fears of a rogue sentient AI. “This is not a figure it out later thing, this like is a big fucking problem,” he mentioned on the Logan Bartlett podcast in June.

Chase, a longtime Twitch spokesperson now at StreamElements who goes by one title, described Shear as “a good fit to helm OpenAI given his passion for benefitting the many over the few, as he illustrated with Twitch coupled with his concerns about the potential for AI to be dangerous.”

Shock Departure

The story of Altman’s ousting and fast return raises questions on OpenAI’s governance and long-term prospects. The construction that enabled a small variety of folks with out ties to the corporate to determine Altman’s destiny, initially meant to maintain OpenAI’s expertise useful to humanity, has come underneath new scrutiny. Some traders beforehand expressed concern in regards to the nonprofit board’s lack of company expertise.

The saga additionally factors to a schism within the tech business between those that see generative AI like ChatGPT as a expertise to be exploited commercially, and people who fear in regards to the dangers of pushing the boundaries on one thing that has confirmed each highly effective and unpredictable.

News of Altman’s exit blindsided traders who’ve spent billions of {dollars} bankrolling OpenAI’s analysis. Microsoft, a key associate that has pledged $13 billion in funding and supplied huge cloud computing assets, led a push, amongst different traders, to have Altman reinstated.

Altman based OpenAI in 2015 with Brockman, Elon Musk, and a small crew of prime AI researchers. Their aim was to create an open, nonprofit AI entity as a counterpoint to the profit-motivated likes of Google. The group would work on creating superhuman AI with the aim of benefiting all of humanity fairly than just a few highly effective tech firms and their shareholders.