Wall Street’s AI trade on watch as Altman, Musk join calls for slowing development

Major figures in the artificial intelligence industry, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk, have joined calls for slowing the pace of AI development, echoing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's proposal for a three-step plan to manage the rapid advancement of AI technology. The suggestion, outlined in a lengthy blog post titled 'We Must Pace the Frontier,' calls for Anthropic to grant third-party evaluators continuous, employee-like access to verify safety practices and assess the alignment of models with training pipelines.

Altman and Musk both agreed with Amodei's stance, with Musk emphasizing the need for oversight and peer review of AI systems. The calls to slow AI development could potentially impact Wall Street's high-flying AI trade, with tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures slipping 1% on Sunday. The AI boom that began in late 2022 led to significant valuation gains for U.S. tech behemoths, pushing the S&P 500 to record levels and swelling its capitalization by tens of trillions of dollars.

U.S. chip stocks, which have greatly benefited from the AI boom, could see a significant hit due to the slowdown calls, as they rely on major chipmakers and custom silicon manufacturers. Memory and software stocks could also be affected, while hardware stocks might face some relief from a potential AI slowdown.