Global equities tied to the artificial intelligence sector declined on Monday following a joint appeal from prominent tech executives demanding a reduction in the pace of AI development. The sell-off was triggered by an essay published over the weekend by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which called for the industry to «pace the frontier» of advancing model capabilities.
Amodei’s proposal garnered罕见 support from key competitors. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly endorsed the notion that AI firms need to regulate the speed of their progress. Additionally, Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX, affirmed his agreement with Amodei on the social media platform X, stating, «Dario is right.»
The market reaction was immediate and widespread. In Asian trading, shares of SoftBank, a major investor in OpenAI, plummeted 10%. South Korean semiconductor giants also saw significant losses, with SK Hynix falling more than 6% and Samsung Electronics dropping over 4%.
European markets mirrored the downturn. ASML, the Dutch chip equipment manufacturer, dropped more than 4%, while Infineon fell over 6%. Nokia shares declined by approximately 5%. Companies involved in data center infrastructure, including Siemens Energy and Schneider Electric, also experienced downward pressure on their stock prices.
The financial turbulence follows an intensifying debate regarding the safety risks associated with rapidly evolving AI models. Last week, Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic who previously worked at OpenAI, resigned, alleging that both companies were «gambling with our lives» by pursuing unsafe AI development trajectories.
In response to Coxon’s departure, Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger stated that there is a greater than 10% probability that AI could «kill all humans» within the next decade. These comments ignited a fierce online debate, leading to the recent call from Amodei for a collective slowdown in capability improvements to mitigate potential existential risks.
If safety really matters, why are they still releasing more powerful models next week? This pause feels completely insincere.
SoftBank down 10% overnight? That is a brutal reaction to an essay. Investors clearly didn’t expect industry leaders to self-sabotage like this.
Tell me why no one asked us about the risks before we spent trillions building this. Classic move.
As a software engineer, I find the existential risk warnings concerning, but the market panic seems disproportionate and ungrounded.
Does this actually mean anything, or is it just a performative PR move to buy time while they race ahead secretly?
Irony at its finest. Executives demanding a slowdown just sent their own stocks tumbling down the toilet.