AI stocks slide after top industry CEOs call for slowdown of technology’s development
By Hanna Ziady, CNN
London (CNN) — AI-linked stocks tumbled Monday after the CEOs of some of the companies developing the most advanced AI models called for a slowdown in the technology’s development to allow for more guardrails to be put in place.
Nasdaq futures fell 1.5%, dragged down by premarket declines in chipmakers Nvidia and Intel. Shares in SoftBank, which is invested in ChatGPT-creator OpenAI, closed nearly 11% lower in Japan. South Korea’s Kospi sank 3.3%, hurt by a 6.4% fall in chipmaker SK Hynix. In Europe, Dutch semiconductor manufacturer ASML was down 6%.
The downward moves come after Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, which is behind AI chatbot Claude, called for a slowdown in the pace at which the technology advances in a lengthy essay shared on X.
“AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious,” he said. “They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption.”
AI developers should pace the rate at which the technology advances “so that “risk prevention has time to keep up,” he added. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
Both Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, and Elon Musk, who runs xAI, said in posts on X that they agree with Amodei.
Risks of a slowdown in AI frontier development threaten the technology’s investment case, according to Neil Wilson, UK strategist at investment bank Saxo. Analysts would be “scrabbling around to assess likely impact on earnings and valuations” if AI-linked companies “coordinate a material slowing in development and erect guardrails,” he wrote in a note Monday.
There are also concerns about growing debt levels among AI firms, which are borrowing vast sums to build the data centers needed to house AI infrastructure.
AI-led momentum in global equity markets has “wobbled” in recent months “amid growing signs of vulnerability in the tech sector,” the Bank for International Settlements, which represents central banks, said in its latest quarterly review Monday.
“Rising concerns about the future profitability of significant AI investments and the sustainability of large profit margins were fuelled by the increasing leverage of major US tech firms,” it noted.
OpenAI won’t go public this year
Fears over the risks posed by AI resurfaced last week after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, stating “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
In another sign of growing worries from within the industry, Altman said in remarks published Saturday that OpenAI would not go public in 2026, as previously expected. “I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” he told Fortune magazine in an interview.
US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, downplayed the risks of AI, emphasizing instead America’s lead over China in the AI race. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump told reporters at his Ireland golf course, when asked if the AI industry should be more heavily regulated.
“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
Altman, on the other hand, argued that pacing the technology’s development would be “well worth the cost.” “No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” he wrote on X Saturday.
The-CNN-Wire
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Robert North contributed reporting.
