Tech stocks fall amid Anthropic CEO's call to slow down AI development

The Kospi index fell 3.3 percent on Monday amid a fall in the value of securities related to the AI ​​boom of key companies for the South Korean market, SK Hynix and Samsung (by 7.6 and 4.9 percent, respectively), while the quotes of SoftBank, OpenAI's largest investor, fell by 11.3 percent in Tokyo, trading data shows.

Futures for the US S&P 500 and Nasdaq are also declining. The negative trading dynamics are associated with the reaction to a letter from the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, who two days ago called for slowing down the development of artificial intelligence due to the fact that it has accelerated significantly and without taking action, AI can outstrip the ability of humans to control systems.

Expressing his belief that AI has the potential to eradicate most diseases within the next five to 10 years, accelerate economic growth, “create a world of abundance and opportunity, and spark a renaissance of democracy,” Amodei once again acknowledged that AI poses risks that, given the enormous power of this technology, are very serious. Among the problems, the top manager identified not only the risks of cyber-attacks, bioterrorism and possible economic shocks, but also the fact that “the situation could be aggravated by the ‘race to race’ and the desire to lower standards for the sake of commercial gain.”

“Over the past few months, I have come to believe that to fully address risk, we need to be even more diligent,” Amodei said, emphasizing that it is not just about investing in threat prevention, but also about managing the pace of AI capabilities to ensure that security measures keep pace with these developments. Pointing out that “progress will still seem rapid,” he advocated slowing down the pace of improvements in the capabilities of AI models and “using the time we have gained wisely.”

Amodei has reached out to the world's leading technology companies to collaborate in this area and has already received support from a number of AI industry captains, including Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman. The latter, noting that we are not talking about “stopping”, but about progress continuing, but going more slowly, actually used the news feed to announce the refusal of the ChatGPT developer to go public in 2026.

The fact that OpenAI began to lean towards postponing the IPO was reported back in June, when it turned out that business consultants suggested either placing shares in 2026, but with a lower valuation, or doing it later, reaching the desired level of a trillion dollars, which Altman, as the company’s CEO, insists on.