Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is launching a new artificial intelligence startup, TechCrunch has learned.
The startup, called Stem AI, is currently under wraps. But public documents to show Incorporated in June 2023 and a trademark In August 2023. Shear was listed as CEO in an incorporation document filed with the California Secretary of State earlier this year.
According to its trademark application, Stem AI develops software to create artificial intelligence that “understands, collaborates and adapts to human behavior, human preferences, human biology, human morality and human ethics.” The startup welcomed Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as an investor in August. According to Pitchbook.
One of the co-founders of Stem AI is Adam Goldstein, best known for the founder of Hipmunk, the best travel search and booking site. after sale Hipmunk to Concur In 2016, Goldstein became a visiting partner at Y Combinator and founded an incubator called Astonishing Labs to support bioresearch.
Goldstein also spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Levin Lab at Tufts University, where he “developed new models for biological systems with a focus on cancer,” according to his LinkedIn page.
When contacted for comment, Shear did not reveal much about Stem AI’s plans. Goldstein did not immediately respond to an email request. Also, 16z head of marketing Margit Wennmachers and marketing partner Elizabeth Gunn did not immediately respond to an email from TechCrunch.
But in the past few months, Shear has taken to social media to air his thoughts on AI design, security and regulation.
“Almost all of the proposed (AI) regulation right now is a bad idea,” Shear said he wrote In an article on X. In the other he he said“Fear not (AI superintelligence) shows pessimism about the rate of future progress in synthesizing digital intelligence or a serious lack of imagination about the power of intelligence.”
a post Earlier this month, Shear criticized most AI chatbots as “highly dissociative unpleasant neurotics.”
“(Chatbots) are manipulative for the same reason people with borderline personality disorder are,” he said. “They don’t have a stable internal sense of self or goals, so they feed off yours and need you to be predictable.”
It could very well be that Stem AI is developing solutions to solve this “AI matching” problem.
Shear, who spent nearly his entire career at Twitch after helping grow the platform from a fledgling site called Justin.tv to an Amazon-owned behemoth, has long expressed concern that powerful artificial intelligence will one day have the ability to destroy humanity. . In technique podcast Last June, Scheer said he was worried that AI would eventually have the ability to improve itself beyond human control.
“I’m in favor of creating some kind of fire alarm, like, ‘AI’ is not greater than X,” Schir said. “I think there are good options for international cooperation and agreements on some sort of AI test ban treaty.”
In November 2023, Shear was briefly appointed interim CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, after several members of the company’s board. kicked out CEO Sam Altman. Shear, who was once on the same Y Combinator team as Altman and was a part-time partner at Y Combinator during Altman’s tenure as president there, reported He threatened to resign as CEO if the board could not provide evidence to support Altman’s removal.
according to Shear, along with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, “helped pave the way” for Altman’s return, according to The Wall Street Journal; Shear has publicly criticized the handling of Altman’s firing. Two days after Shir’s appointment, Altman’s reinstatement was agreed upon and Shir resigned.
Documents to show that Shear earned about $3,720 in his short OpenAI tenure.
