Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, was announced as the new CEO of OpenAI on November 20, 2023, leaving the online community shocked. The decision came just days after the organization's co-founder, Sam Altman, was fired by the board of directors. Bloomberg's Emily Chang shared the update on her official X (formerly Twitter) account, writing:
"The OpenAI board has hired Emmett Shear as CEO. He is the former CEO of Twitch. My understanding is that Sam is in shock."
The report became a hot topic of conversation on the r/LivestreamFail subreddit, with numerous netizens weighing in. According to Redditor u/hornedpajamas, Emmett Shear's appointment as the new CEO of OpenAI would "completely kill" it.
They elaborated:
"This completely kills OpenAI. Emmett Shear is one of these doomsday cult followers who believe AI needs to be strongly restricted and controlled by their EA cult in order to 'protect humanity.' A huge step back for a free internet and free and Open AI. You can expect a more restricted ChatGPT in the future with more 'Sorry, I can't answer that' replies. The doomsday cult wins again.
"I can't tell if this is real or a meme" - Online community reacts to the news of Emmett Shear's appointment as the new CEO of OpenAI
Emily Chang's tweet has gone viral on the Elon Musk-owned platform. With over 340 community members chiming in, user @zaidrmn wanted Netflix to produce a mini-series based on the circumstances surrounding Sam Altman's departure from the company he co-founded:
One netizen shared Emmett Shear's old tweet, in which he expressed his concerns about AI. He wrote:
"How could you falsify your claim that we have nothing to fear from continued improvement to AI? What would we have to observe, short of the AI actually killing us all, of course, that would make you change your mind."
Jerry Liu, co-founder and CEO of LlamaIndex, made a lighthearted remark about Emmett Shear's appointment as the new CEO of OpenAI:
"At this point, I can't tell if this is real or a meme."
Meanwhile, one user on the r/LivestreamFail subreddit pointed out that the former Twitch executive was appointed as the "interim CEO":
According to u/sourcec0p, Emmett Shear succeeding Sam Altman as CEO "made sense" because they were both from the same Y Combinator class:
Some of the more pertinent reactions were along these lines:
Readers interested in learning why Sam Altman was fired from his position as CEO of OpenAI can do so by clicking here.