- OpenAI’s new interim CEO has said AI could potentially take over jobs like his.
- Much of the CEO role, Emmett Shear tweeted on Thursday, can be automated.
- Shear was appointed as OpenAI’s top exec after Sam Altman was ousted on Friday by the company board.
Emmett Shear, OpenAI’s new interim CEO, thinks artificial intelligence can perform most of a CEO’s responsibilities.
That’s what he tweeted on Thursday, just four days before he was tapped to become the AI company’s replacement for the ousted Sam Altman. The Information first reported the appointment.
Shear, who was previously the CEO of streaming platform Twitch, reposted a 2021 article that suggested companies automate CEO roles.
“If a single role is as expensive as thousands of workers, it is surely the prime candidate for robot-induced redundancy,” read a line in the article by Will Dunn, the business editor of The New Statesman.
Shear mostly agreed. “Unironically. Most of the CEO job (and the majority of most executive jobs) are very automatable. There are of course the occasional key decisions you can’t replace,” he wrote.
Responsibilities that can be delegated to automation, Shear wrote, include finding new talent, giving feedback, communication, and identifying problems and solutions.
And good CEOs mostly find problems, with the occasional solution, Shear added.
The internet entrepreneur then clarified that he felt it isn’t possible to “truly replace the CEO.”
“But I think we will see management get widely automated,” he said, adding that companies would become “flatter and more dynamic.”
Shear wasn’t the CEO of Twitch or OpenAI at the time of his tweet — he left his role at the streaming platform in March. He calls himself an “Internet Citizen” on LinkedIn.
Shear is now back in the spotlight after he was reported to be taking over from Altman, who was ousted in a shock firing on Friday by OpenAI’s board. Surprised investors lobbied to have Altman reinstated, but negotiations appear to have been unsuccessful as Shear was announced for the role on Sunday evening.
Shear has been vocal about AI ethics and philosophy, often saying he’s worried about the possibility of AI becoming so sophisticated it can improve upon itself without the need of a human. This theory says AI would then rapidly improve at such an exponential pace that we wouldn’t be able to control it.
In a June interview, he put the probability of such a scenario occurring at between 5 to 50%.
OpenAI and Shear did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
Meanwhile, Altman and Greg Brockman — OpenAI’s former president — have been hired to lead a new AI research team at Microsoft, per Microsoft Corporation CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft has been a key investor in OpenAI.
“We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI’s new leadership team and working with them,” Nadella wrote.
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