OpenAI board hires Former Twitch CEO Shear to succeed Sam Altman: Report

Emmett Shear named new Interim CEO of OpenAI: Dramatic events unfolded after Sam Altman was ousted as the CEO of OpenAI on Friday. In the latest development, talks of Sam being brought back seem to have fallen through.

The Board of Directors has hired former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as the Interim Chief Executive Officer to succeed Sam Altman. This, even as OpenAI's executives and investors including Microsoft have been working to bring Sam Altman back.

However, the board of directors has chosen a new path by appointing Emmett Shear. This marks the third change in CEO leadership within a span of three days. The Verge reported that the board members failed to meet today's 6:30AM IST deadline to resign and reinstate him. Altman had demanded the current members of the board to exit and bring some changes in governance. He also sought a statement absolving him of wrongdoing.

Meanwhile Reuters reported that Sam Altman is mulling to launch a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture even while he is discussing a possible return to OpenAI.

Board hires ex-Twitch CEO, Emmett Shear

According to The Information, Sam Altman along with former president Greg Brockman joined the executives at the company's San Francisco headquarters on Sunday.

Also Read: Sam Altman reacts to OpenAI ouster: Calls it a 'weird experience'

The Board's decision to hire Shear has defied all the calls from the investors to reinstate Altman as the CEO of OpenAI. As per Bloomberg, Shear had won over the directors as he recognised the existential threats AI posed. The Board was concerned that Sam Altman was moving too quickly, without sufficient concern to the safety implications of a technology that, left unchecked, could create content capable of harming the public.

Shear had stepped down ast the CEO of Amazon.com Inc's game streaming platform Twitch earlier this year.

Sam Altman's possible new venture

After the fiasco, the ChatGPT maker is also considering launching a new AI venture. Altman’s position is strengthened by the loyalty of several employees, including top research scientists who contribute significantly to OpenAI’s intellectual property and the development of its groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot.

If Altman had returned to OpenAI, Microsoft was considering taking a role on the board, reported The Information. It further claimed that Microsoft could either take a seat on OpenAI's board of directors, or as a board observer without voting power.

The board members led by OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever on Friday dismissed Altman and stripped him of his director role, saying “he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”