Emmett Shear: Life After Twitch, Jeff Bezos Lessons & AI Doomsday Odds

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Is AI going to kill us all?

**Emmett Shear** (0:03)
Uh, maybe.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:04)
Emmett Shear is the CEO of Twitch. It was acquired by Amazon in 2014 He joins us now.

**Emmett Shear** (0:12)
I started Twitch to help people watch other people play video games on the internet.

**Shaan Puri** (0:17)
The creator and co-founder of Twitch. Watch other people play video games, who knew? Emmett knew, I guess that's the answer.
What types of ideas are you noticing or standing out to you that are interesting?

**Emmett Shear** (0:27)
For the first time in maybe five to seven years, it feels like credibly trying to start a consumer internet company. Like the ones that like I was so excited to start in 2007 is like potentially a good idea. And that's because of AI.

**Shaan Puri** (0:38)
You mentioned AI might become so intelligent, it kills us all.
This podcast is really growing. I don't want the world to end.

**Emmett Shear** (0:45)
I think it's gonna be okay. But it's such, the downside is so bad. It's like, it's really probably worse than nuclear war.
That's a really bad downside. I think of it as a range of uncertainty. And I would say that the true probability, I believe, is somewhere between.

**Shaan Puri** (1:14)
All right, what you're about to hear is a conversation I had with Emmett Shear. Emmett was the creator and co-founder of Twitch. If you don't know about Twitch, I know you're living under a rock. It's like one of the most, I don't know, five most popular websites in the States right now.
It is a place where you can go to watch other people play video games, of all things. Watch other people play video games. Who knew? Emmett knew, I guess that's the answer. So he was the creator, co-founder of that and built it up. It's a multi-billion dollar company. They sold to Amazon many years ago, seven years ago or eight years ago for about a billion dollars and has grown many times since then.
He finally retired after 17 years of the journey.
I got to know Emmett because he bought my previous company. So we got acquired by Twitch.
Emmett was like my quote unquote boss for my time when I was at Twitch. So I got to see this guy firsthand. He's the real deal. And I've been wanting to get him on the podcast since those early days when I first met him. I was like, this guy is great. We talked about a bunch of things. So we talked about some ideas of like how he would use AI if he was gonna create another company. Like I think he's good. He's retired now from that game of operating a company. But if he was gonna do it, this is what he would do.
So we talked about AI ideas. We talked about why he thinks AI might kill us all, might be the big doom scenario, which is interesting. Cause he's not just a guy who's gonna go cry wolf. He's not a pessimist. He's not just a journalist who hates tech. He's a techno optimist. This is a guy who believes in tech is a very, very intelligent guy. And he sees a probability. He gave us a percentage of probability he thinks that could be sort of the doomsday scenario and why he thinks that could be the case and what we should do about it. So we talk about AI. We talk about some of the frameworks that he has for building companies. We didn't talk too much about like the origin of Twitch. You feel like he's done that a bunch of times. So we kind of stayed away from that, but it was a wide ranging conversation. And for those who are watching this on YouTube, I apologize the studio that we booked at San Francisco, they screwed up the video. So we don't have video for YouTube. We just have the audio only version. So you'll see our profile pictures. My bad, sorry about that.
You know, gotta pick a better place. Gotta pick a better studio, I guess. But anyways, enjoy this episode with Emmett Shear.
Somebody said, creativity is not like a faucet. You can't just turn it on. I think actually if you've polled like 100 people, most people are like, yeah, of course, creativity is the sacred special thing that only happens if you've meditated in the morning and the room is perfectly right and you've had your Alfiening in your coffee or whatever.
And you were like, no, for me, it is like a faucet watch.
And I can just write and just keep generating more ideas. I love that for two reasons. One, I love that you'll just be like, no, actually this. That's like a consistent thing I've seen you do. And the second is, I think that's very true about you and I wonder, is that practiced or is that innate? Like if there was a researcher studying you when you were like 10 years old, do you think they would have been like, oh, this person's different in these ways? What would have seemed different or special about you at the time?