(Bloomberg) -- When Emmett Shear got the call on Sunday, he’d been taking a break from running things to be a stay-at-home dad. Now the executive who created the world’s pre-eminent livestreaming service finds himself in the center of the battle over the future of artificial intelligence as OpenAI’s new impresario.

Shear, who over 12 years built Twitch from a niche platform into an entertainment powerhouse owned by Amazon.com Inc., said it only took him a few hours to decide to jump into the fray after OpenAI’s board shocked the global tech industry by firing co-founder Sam Altman from its top job. 

“I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence,” Shear said in a post on X on Monday. “Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.”

At the heart of the maelstrom, which pits Microsoft Corp. and a host of powerful Valley financiers against Altman’s longtime collaborator Ilya Sutskever and the OpenAI board, is how quickly the cutting edge technology that is already transforming work, study and medicine can be developed without creating an existential threat to humanity. 

Shear, who became OpenAI’s second interim chief executive in three days, won over the directors because of his past recognition of the threats that AI presents, a person familiar with the matter said, asking to remain anonymous to discuss the private deliberations. 

He’ll be facing a staff insurrection, with around 500 of 770 OpenAI employees threatening to quit unless board resigns and Altman is reinstated, according on open letter whose signatories included Sutskever.

Read More: The Doomed Mission Behind Sam Altman’s Shock Ouster From OpenAI

Shear is a well-regarded technologist and computer scientist who’s long advocated a more cautious approach to AI. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

In September, Shear wrote on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, that he’s “in favor of a slowdown” of artificial intelligence technological advancement. “We can’t learn how to build a safe AI without experimenting, and we can’t experiment without progress, but we probably shouldn’t be barreling ahead at max speed either,” he said.

In an interview with Redpoint Ventures managing director Logan Bartlett earlier this year, Shear said artificial general intelligence could portend not just human-level extinction but a “universe-destroying bomb.”

“This is not a figure-it-out later thing,” Shear told Bartlett, peppering his speech about the risks with expletives. 

Read More: Microsoft Ends Weekend of OpenAI Drama With Coup of Its Own

He’ll be working closely with Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s biggest backer and owns nearly half of the startup. The Seattle-based tech giant was unable to prevent Altman’s ouster due to OpenAI’s unusual governance that dates to its origin as a nonprofit organization. 

Instead, it hired Altman and several of his colleagues to develop a new AI research team that could potentially rival OpenAI. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella posted on X early Monday that the company “remains committed to our partnership with OpenAI.” 

Shear, a Seattle native who attended a school for gifted children and graduated from Yale University, founded livecasting platform Justin.tv in 2007 with schoolmate Justin Kan and two others. The pair bonded over math classes and Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game.

Justin.tv started as a livecasting platform before pivoting to a public posting service covering everything from technology to gaming. That last aspect grew swiftly and was ultimately spun off in 2011 as TwitchTV, named after the notion of “twitch” or fast-reflexive gameplay. Amazon stepped in to buy out the platform in 2014 for around $1 billion.

Read More: Twitch Streamers Seek New Ways to Make Money, Avoid Burnout

Twitch is credited with formalizing the creator economy, which monetizes viewers’ time and attention over social media. On Twitch, viewers watch and interact with internet celebrities who play video games or just talk to fans. In turn, fans donate money or subscribe to their content. 

At Twitch, Shear rarely gave interviews or interfaced with livestreamers himself. His focus was on the quantitative and technical aspects of the company, former employees have said. As Shear scaled Twitch, some former employees claimed he was out-of-touch with the livestreaming user base, who demanded more features focused on quality-of-life.

In 2022, Twitch suffered an exodus of executives under Shear. He left in March, just ahead of a round of layoffs, saying he wanted he wanted to spend more time with his newborn son. Twitch’s new CEO, Dan Clancy, has gone on a charm offensive to woo back unhappy livestreamers. 

Read More: OpenAI’s Interim CEO to Probe ‘Badly Handled’ Altman Exit

Like some members of OpenAI’s board, Shear has ties to the sometimes controversial effective altruism movement, which sees serious risks from advanced AI. Some people affiliated with the movement have imagined scenarios in which a powerful AI system could wreak widespread harm.

Shear laid out a plan Monday in his post on X for his first month at OpenAI, calling for reform to the management team and an independent investigation of Altman’s ouster. Shear said the company’s partnership with Microsoft “remains strong” and that remains committed to a commercial vision for its products.

“I’m not crazy enough to take this job without board support for commercializing our awesome models,” he said. 

--With assistance from Cecilia D'Anastasio.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.