AI stocks are opening the week lower after warnings were issued by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on the future of AI. Over the weekend, Amodei dropped a gloomy 3,800-word essay that rattled investor confidence across the entire semiconductor and AI infrastructure complex. Since his essay, OpenAI’s Sam Altman also shared his worries, saying that we may “lose control” over the technology and that the worries have even given him “sleepless nights.”
“Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Amodei stated in an essay on Saturday. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” Altman co-signed the message early Monday morning, saying that AI progress could go “very badly.”
“There are two ways AI progress could go very badly, and that we must avoid,” Altman said in an X post at around 12:57 a.m. ET. “First, we could lose control of the future to AI. This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.”
He continued, “Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power. If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian. Avoiding these two threats requires walking a narrow middle path; for example, one country could gain too much power. Another example is one lab ending up with too much power.” Furthermore, Altman even revealed that OpenAI will not IPO this year.
AI Stocks Fall as Panic Ensues
As a result of Altman and Amodei’s warnings, several AI stocks have taken a hit Monday. Marvell (MRVL), SK Hynix (SKHY), Micron (MU), and Super Micro (SMCI) each fell 6%, while CoreWeave (CRWV), SanDisk (SNDK), Intel (INTC), and AMD (AMD) were all off by more than 4%. Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO) also slipped 3% after the opening bell today.
Despite the AI slip and warnings, US President Donald Trump on Sunday pushed back on the safety concerns, saying, “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Reuters reported. Trump has rejected the call to slow AI growth, but plenty of firms are listening to them and announcing initiatives to limit work and spending on AI. As a result, AI stocks may continue to slip throughout this week.