Futures tied to the Nasdaq 100 index led early declines on Monday, driven by a selloff in AI heavyweights after top U.S. executives called for a slowdown in AI development over safety concerns.
Shares of Nvidia fell more than 3% in premarket trading, while Amazon lost 1%. SanDisk shed 5%.
The slide follows a dramatic warning from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who on Saturday called on artificial intelligence companies to slow the pace at which they advance model capabilities.
“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 his essay. “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.”
The Anthropic CEO’s essay has drawn criticism in China, with the state-owned Global Times writing on Monday that “Amodei’s proposals seek to portray China’s legitimate development as a threat and further fuel confrontation between China and the US in the field.”
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated they agreed with Amodei.
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” Altman posted on X. “This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”
“We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,” Altman said on Monday, adding that “no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness.”
By CEO NA Editorial Staff
