Emmett Shear steps into the hurricane; Nadella offers an out
Overnight, a new figure entered the picture: Emmett Shear, who previously served as CEO of Twitch but had resigned from that position to spend time with his newborn child.
"Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI," wrote Emmett Shear in a lengthy post on Monday at 1:01 am Pacific time. "I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence."
Shear promised to implement a three-point plan to shore up OpenAI over the next 30 days that involves hiring an independent investigator to "dig into" the process leading up to Altman's firing, continue to speak to stakeholders and share key takeaways, and reform the OpenAI management team in light of recent departures.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also chose social media network X as his venue to announce major news at 11:53 pm Pacific time Sunday, voicing support for Shear as interim CEO and talking up future plans for Altman at Microsoft. Here is the text of his full statement:
We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners. We look forward to getting to know Emmett Shear and OAI's new leadership team and working with them. And we’re extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success.
For now, it's looking like Microsoft may walk away with Altman, Brockman, and a majority of OpenAI employees if the OpenAI board does not cede to employee demands, which means that the OpenAI board will have inadvertently engineered the implosion of tech's hottest startup. Bloomberg journalist Ashlee Vance wrote, "I suspect there might not be enough cars in the US for the number of lawyers that shall descend upon San Francisco."
Altman joining Microsoft is not yet a foregone conclusion. As of Monday morning Pacific time, over 700 OpenAI employees out of 770 have reportedly signed the aforementioned protest letter that asks the board of OpenAI to resign, with news of the numbers coming from multiple sources inside OpenAI. OpenAI researcher Noam Brown tweeted, "Everyone at @OpenAI is united. This is not a civil war. Unless Sam and Greg are brought back, there will be no OpenAI left to govern."
At 10:27 am, Sam Altman wrote, "we have more unity and commitment and focus than ever before. we are all going to work together some way or other, and i’m so excited. one team, one mission."
Meanwhile, amid fears that OpenAI's services may become unstable due to the chaos, several OpenAI employees have tweeted that staff is still on hand to tend services such as ChatGPT and their API systems. OpenAI API engineer Sherwin Wu wrote, "In case it isn’t clear: all of our services (i.e., our API and ChatGPT) are still being actively maintained and monitored. Folks have actually stepped up to ensure duplicate on-call coverage during this time to make sure the customer experience is still stable and reliable."
This is part of a breaking news story that will be updated as details emerge. It has been updated on November 20, 2023, at 2:06 pm ET with tweets from Noam Brown, Sam Altman, and Sherwin Wu.
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