US stocks sank on Monday morning after the two leading frontier artificial intelligence companies called for an industrywide slowdown of AI development, sending tech stocks tumbling. Rising oil prices and an upcoming Fed meeting this week also put pressure on stocks.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 fell 0.8%, led by losses in chip stocks, including Nvidia. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.3%, while those on the S&P 500 declined by 0.6%. In Asia, shares of memory chip makers SK Hynix and SamsungTech stocks were poised to fall after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote a 3,800-word essay over the weekend, arguing that AI companies should slow the pace of improving AI models in order to address safety concerns.
Sam Altman, the CEO of rival AI lab OpenAI, agreed in a post on X, putting the two AI companies at odds with Wall Street, which has banked on a brisk pace of improvement.Worries about AI safety also led OpenAI to delay its initial public offering until 2027, Altman told Fortune. Anthropic still plans to list in the fall and has reportedly chosen the Nasdaq for its highly anticipated IPO.
Oil prices, meanwhile, continued to climb after Saudi Arabia shut down a key pipeline in the Middle East and as the war in the Middle East spread. Brent crude traded near $108 per barrel.
That sets the stage for the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting on Wednesday. Trader bets of a Fed rate hike have spiked to 88% following Friday’s consumer inflation report, creating a consensus even as Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh has emphasized that he will not provide forward guidance about the Fed policymaking.
Yahoo Finance
