- OpenAI’s new interim CEO said artificial intelligence could potentially take over jobs like his.
- Much of the role of CEO Emmett Shear he wrote on Twitter on Thursdaycan be automated.
- Shear was named chief executive of OpenAI after Sam Altman was ousted by the company’s board on Friday.
Emmett Shear, the new interim CEO of OpenAI, believes that artificial intelligence can perform most of the responsibilities of a CEO.
That’s what he tweeted on Thursday, just four days before he was chosen to replace the ousted Sam Altman at the artificial intelligence company. information was the first to report the encounter.
Shear, who previously served as CEO of the streaming platform Twitch, republished a 2021 article in which he suggested companies were automating CEO roles.
“If one job is as expensive as thousands of workers, it is certainly a prime candidate for robot-related layoffs,” the article says article by Will Dunn, business editor of The New Statesman.
Shear mostly agreed. “Unironically. Most CEO positions (and most management positions) can be highly automated. Of course, sometimes there are key decisions that cannot be replaced.” he wrote.
Shear wrote that responsibilities that can be delegated to automation include finding new talent, providing feedback, communicating, and identifying problems and solutions.
And good CEOs mostly find problems and occasionally solve them, Shear added.
The internet entrepreneur then explained that he believed it was impossible to “truly replace a CEO.”
“But I think we will see management become widely automated,” he said, adding that companies will become “flatter and more dynamic.”
At the time of the tweet, Shear was not the CEO of Twitch or OpenAI — he left the streaming platform in March. He calls himself an “Internet Citizen.” LinkedIn.
Shear is back in the spotlight after it was reported that he was to take over from Altman, who was removed from his position by OpenAI’s board on Friday. Stunned investors lobbied for Altman’s reinstatement, but negotiations appear to have failed as Shear’s candidacy for the position was announced on Sunday evening.
Shear has been vocal about the ethics and philosophy of artificial intelligence, often expressing concerns that artificial intelligence will become so sophisticated that it will be able to improve itself without human help. This theory states that artificial intelligence will then develop rapidly at such an exponential rate that we will be unable to control it.
In a June interview, he estimated the probability of such a scenario occurring at 5-50%.
OpenAI and Shear did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider made outside normal business hours.
Meanwhile, Altman and Greg Brockman — former CEO of OpenAI — has been hired to lead a new artificial intelligence research team at Microsoft, per Microsoft Corporation CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft is a key investor in OpenAI.
“We look forward to meeting and working with Emmett Shear’s new leadership team and OAI,” Nadella wrote.
