Controlling Tools or Aligning Creatures? Emmett Shear (Softmax) & Séb Krier (GDM), from a16z Show
Emmett Shear and Séb Krier debate whether today’s AI alignment paradigm—focused on control and instruction-following—is fundamentally flawed. PSA for AI builders: Interested in alignment, governance, or AI safety? Learn more about the MATS Summer 2026 Fellowship and submit your name to be notified when applications open: https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr. They explore what changes if advanced AIs are better understood as beings with their own values, and why current control methods could drift toward something like slavery. The conversation dives into “organic alignment,” multi-agent simulations, evolving cooperation, and the possibility of AI moral standing as systems gain memory and continual learning.
Sponsors:
MATS:
MATS is a fully funded 12-week research program pairing rising talent with top mentors in AI alignment, interpretability, security, and governance. Apply for the next cohort at https://matsprogram.org/s26-tcr
Tasklet:
Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai
Agents of Scale:
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Shopify:
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) About the Episode
(03:44) Defining organic AI alignment
(14:48) Technical vs value alignment (Part 1)
(19:55) Sponsors: MATS | Tasklet
(22:56) Technical vs value alignment (Part 2) (Part 1)
(31:34) Sponsors: Agents of Scale | Shopify
(34:21) Technical vs value alignment (Part 2) (Part 2)
(34:22) Labs, tools, and beings
(43:22) AI personhood and consciousness
(56:53) Safe futures and Softmax
(01:04:17) Chatbots, mirrors, simulations
(01:10:14) Doom, futures, and OpenAI
(01:17:25) Outro
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Emmett Shear on Building AI That Actually Cares: Beyond Control and Steering
Emmett Shear, founder of Twitch and former OpenAI interim CEO, challenges the fundamental assumptions driving AGI development. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg and Séb Krier, Shear argues that the entire "control and steering" paradigm for AI alignment is fatally flawed. Instead, he proposes "organic alignment" - teaching AI systems to genuinely care about humans the way we naturally do. The discussion explores why treating AGI as a tool rather than a potential being could be catastrophic, how current chatbots act as "narcissistic mirrors," and why the only sustainable path forward is creating AI that can say no to harmful requests. Shear shares his technical approach through multi-agent simulations at his new company Softmax, and offers a surprisingly hopeful vision of humans and AI as collaborative teammates - if we can get the alignment right.
Resources:
Follow Emmett on X: https://x.com/eshear
Follow Séb on X: https://x.com/sebkrier
Follow Erik on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg
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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
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Emmett Shear: Life After Twitch, Jeff Bezos Lessons & AI Doomsday Odds
Episode 494: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) talks with ex-CEO & co-founder of Twitch, Emmett Shear (https://twitter.com/eshear), about the potential of artificial intelligence, the value of understanding consumer / users needs, his simple framework for problem-solving, the power of seemingly small ideas that can have a huge impact and lessons he’s directly learned from Silicon Valley greats like Paul Graham and Andy Jassey.
Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here.
—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That - https://copythat.com/
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/
• Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant
• Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing
• Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/
• Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) Intro
(4:30) Did you always have an insatiable curiosity?
(8:30) How to solve any problem
(13:23) The importance of understanding your customers / users needs
(22:15) Emmett’s favorite business ideas right now
(41:00) Is AI going to kill us all?
(56:50) Was Twitch luck or skill? Will Emmett try to build another unicorn?
(59:00) Lessons from Paul Graham
(1:09:00) What’s the difference between people who are good vs. great?
—
Links:
• Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv
• Paul Graham - https://twitter.com/paulg
• Patrick Collison - https://twitter.com/patrickc
• Andy Jassey - https://twitter.com/ajassy
• Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.
—
Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
—
Other episodes you might enjoy:
• #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
• #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
• #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
• #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
• #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
• Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
• How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More
EP 69: Emmett Shear (Co-Founder, Twitch). Behind-The-Scenes stories from Twitch's growth to streaming leader
Emmett Shear is the co-founder of Twitch, one of the most influential platforms in recent history. From its humble beginnings as a gaming streaming platform to becoming a cultural phenomenon, Twitch has redefined the way we connect, entertain, and build communities online.
The episode is packed with stories from Emmett’s 16-year tenure as CEO and his journey to founding the company. Emmett shares product frameworks he used to grow and retain streamers, how he learned to not suck at management, and why he thinks remote is bad for most tech start-ups. Emmett also shares insights from being part of the very first batch of YC-founded startups in 2005 alongside Sam Altman and Paul Graham. Finally, Emmett shares what he’s most scared about when it comes to AI.
(0:00) Intro
(1:46) Welcome Emmett Shear
(8:03) Products leading to Twitch
(18:19) Justin.tv
(28:10) Getting growth
(32:40) Cultivating the community for the streamer
(39:02) Google acquihire
(47:05) Declining value to more money
(54:16) Changes in levels of abstraction
(1:00:13) Management lessons
(1:08:52) Remote work debate
(1:17:49) Mentors and coaching
(1:28:24) Ambitions of the founder
(1:36:53) Back to YC
(1:44:45) AI Concerns
(2:03:28) Being a techno optimist
(2:17:44) Turning 40
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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Twitch: Emmett Shear
In 2011, when Emmett Shear pivoted the live streaming service Justin.tv into the video game platform Twitch, people warned him that gaming was just a niche. But unlike his first two ventures, video games were something Emmett instinctively understood: he and his co-founder Justin Kan had been playing them together since they were kids. Emmett built a user base on Twitch by asking streamers exactly what they wanted and giving it to them: revenue opportunities, streamer fan clubs, customizable emoji. As it grew, Twitch attracted users from the darker corners of the web, but Emmett believes the site is first and foremost a way for people to come together and build supportive communities. In 2014, Emmett sold Twitch to Amazon for just under a billion dollars but stayed on as the CEO. Today, the platform has 31 million daily visitors who stream trillions of minutes of live video every year. Not bad for a niche business.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Emmett Shear - The New Language of the Internet – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP.9]
My guest today is Emmett Shear, founder and CEO of Twitch. Twitch is the world's leading live streaming platform for gamers, which was acquired by Amazon in 2014. We talk about how Twitch empowers streamers to monetize their audience, the necessity of picking a customer early in a business, and the lessons Emmett learned scaling Twitch from an online reality TV show to a global brand inside Amazon. We also discuss how Twitch has helped create a new language in the internet age with emotes, a topic I am fascinated by. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Emmett Shear.
This episode is brought to you by Microsoft for Startups. Microsoft for Startups is a global program dedicated to helping “enterprise-ready” B2B startups successfully scale their companies. If you’re a founder running a B2B company targeting the enterprise, you should definitely check them out.
This episode is also brought to you by Solo Stove. There's simply no better way to create good moments this holiday season than around a fire with a Solo Stove Bonfire. Complete with 30-day return policy and a lifetime warranty, the unit is made entirely of stainless steel, and at just 20 pounds, the Solo Stove Bonfire is easy to transport for a perfect evening in the backyard, at the campground, or on the beach. Get $5 off with code Patrick5 before December 31st 2020.
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
Show Notes
(2:52) – (First question) – History of interactive entertainment
(4:10) – Interactivity from the clubs in Vienna and what he learned from that
(5:16) – Origins of Justin.TV and when gaming became the focus for Twitch
(8:59) – What he enjoyed about video streaming games early on
(10:21) – Interactive experience between creators and community
(12:28) – Emotes on twitch and how they came to be
(14:45) – Business of emotes and the affiliates
(16:27) – How these features are proliferating out on the internet and changing it
(17:21) – How far we are in the streamer-influencer phenomenon
(20:00) – Building an effective platform for fans
(23:07) – Evolution of the just chatting piece of Twitch
(24:58) – Favorite parts of Twitch from followers: Chess
(26:45) – Running a business within a larger business
(28:09) – Most interesting trend in the market today
(30:40) – Effective ways for recruiting the team
(31:35) – Most curious about what is happening on the internet today
(33:06) – Advice from the early days of Twitch
(35:55) – Ira Glass video taste and making things
(36:34) – Focus on strategic mission
(38:06) – Identifying the customer
(40:40) – Starting small
(41:45) – Investors focus on potential market size
(43:00) – Most common reasons talented people fail
(43:47) – Kindest thing anyone has done for him
Learn More
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
Sign up for the book club and new email newsletter called “Inside the Episode” at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.
Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag
20VC: Twitch Founder & CEO Emmett Shear on When To Persist vs When To Give Up For Entrepreneurs, The Fundamental Tension When Scaling Orgs and How To Optimise Them & How The Role of CEO Fundamentally Changes with Scale
Emmett Shear is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Twitch, the world's leading live streaming platform for gamers and the things we love. Prior to Twitch's exit to Amazon for a reported $970M, Emmett raised over $42M in funding from some of the best including Thrive Capital, Bessemer, Mike Maples, Aydin Senkut, Paul Graham and Y Combinator. Emmett is also a part-time Partner @ Y Combinator, advising YC companies on everything from fundraising strategy to product decisions to hiring and firing. Before Twitch, Emmett co-founded Kiko, a company he later sold on eBay for 6 figures.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Emmett made his way into the world of startups with Kiko? How he ended up selling that for 6 figures on eBay? How that led to the creation of Justin.TV & Twitch?
2.) Why does Emmett believe starting a startup is like "deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus?" At what point in the journey does is start to get easier? Does Emmett agree with many on the show who say, "it does not get easier, it just gets different"? How does one know when to give up vs when to persist and follow the vision?
3.) How does Emmett think about structuring an org at 1,500 people? Why does Emmett believe there is a fundamental tension when scaling teams between centralisation and decentralisation? How does one structure a reorg without causing instability? How does one communicate the reorg to the team? Where does Emmett see many go wrong here?
4.) Does Emmett agree the best CEOs are the best resource allocators? How does Emmett approach internal resource allocation today between both functions and projects? What does he find most challenging here? What does the decision-making process look like? What are his taekaways from Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in how they determine and process resource allocation internally?
5.) How does Emmett believe he has changed and evolved as a leader over the last 10 years with Twitch? What elements has he found the most challenging to master? What has he done to combat those weaknesses? Where has he always been naturally strong? What makes him so good at those particular functions?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Emmett's Fave Book: Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Emmett on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Episode 54: Emmet Shear
Emmet Shear is the CEO and Co-Founder of Twitch.tv and a partner at YCombinator. We talk about the story of Twitch.tv -- and how it evolved from Justin.TV -- how he became a YC Partner, and then we have a broader talk about capitalism, social inequality, and how technology can reduce it. Edited by @AlexKontis Lavish Praise to @eshear Constructive Criticism to @eriktorenberg
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