AI-linked stocks fell sharply on Monday (September 14) after CEOs of US companies developing advanced AI models warned that the pace of development must be slowed to prevent threats to humanity, according to a Reuters report. Nasdaq e-mini futures fell 1.3% after the warning, and SoftBank shares fell as much as 13.2%.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, an AI research company similar to OpenAI, in a post shared on X on Saturday, called on AI companies to slow down the rate at which they increase the capabilities of their models, amid growing concerns about the misuse of artificial intelligence.
Following Amodei’s call, xAI CEO Elon Musk and Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAl) agreed with him. Altman said that OpenAl will not move forward with an IPO this year due to security concerns, according to the report.
Amodei warned in his post that within 6 to 12 months, AI agents could be capable of taking over the entire internet potentially causing “hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.”
Meanwhile, among AI-linked stocks, Kioxia, a Japanese maker of memory chips, saw its share price drop 9.8% in early trading, while the country’s semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Electron’s share price fell 3.7%.
In Shanghai, China, shares of memory chipmaker CXMT and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation fell. Meanwhile, shares of three AI-related companies listed in Hong Kong also fell.
Taiwan’s TSMC was another hit. The chipmaker’s shares fell 1.2%. South Korea’s SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics also fell. Asian chipmakers and OpenAI investor SoftBank suffered heavy losses on Monday after warnings of rapid AI development, Reuters reported.
Anthropic released a report on Thursday warning that various parties have used their Claude AI (next-generation AI assistant) models for activities ranging from weapons development and cyber operations to surveillance and fraud.
Concerns about the potential dangers of AI have heightened following Jacob Coxon’s resignation from Anthropic. AI researcher Coxon fears that AI could become out of control in the future and said, “People building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
