Global AI-related stocks declined following calls from industry leaders to slow the pace of AI development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a post titled 'We must control the pace of frontier AI development,' advocating for a deceleration in model capability iteration.
The market reaction was swift: in Asia, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics shares fell by over 6% and 4% respectively, while SoftBank dropped 10%. European markets saw ASML decline by over 4%, Nokia by about 5%, and Infineon by over 6%. In US pre-market trading, Micron fell 5%, Intel 6%, and Nvidia 2%.
The debate intensified after Anthropic researcher Jacob Hilton claimed companies are 'gambling with humanity's fate,' and safety researcher Evan Hubinger suggested a greater than 10% probability of AI causing human extinction within a decade. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed support for slowing the pace of development.
Investors fear that a slowdown could disrupt capital expenditures totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in chip and computing power procurement. RBC Brewin Dolphin director Zoe Gillespie noted that current stock valuations are heavily tied to expectations of AI-driven productivity growth.
Despite market concerns, industry experts suggest the impact may be limited. Ben Barringer of Quilter Cheviot stated that while development might slow, the industry faces a significant deficit in inference computing power, meaning demand continues to outstrip supply, potentially protecting corporate revenues.
