Tech stocks today: AI warnings send shock through chip stocks

On Monday, tech stocks experienced a decline as leaders in the AI industry expressed concerns about the future of the technology and its potential to harm humans. The Nasdaq saw a drop of around 0.8% in early trading, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell by more than 4%. The situation began last week when an Anthropic researcher shared on X that he was leaving the company, stating that he did not feel Anthropic was doing enough to prevent AI from going too far.

Anthropic Alignment Science Lead Evan Hubinger responded to the post, agreeing with the researcher and expressing a greater-than-10% chance that AI could lead to human extinction. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei then published an essay urging AI companies to slow down the pace of development for frontier AI models. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed this sentiment.

Microsoft announced on Monday that it is developing its own code of conduct for AI models. Amid the growing concerns surrounding AI safety, cybersecurity stocks were poised to benefit, with shares of Okta, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto Networks gaining 5%, 4.5%, and 4.5% respectively in premarket trading. This positive action contrasted sharply with the decline in the AI sector.

Within two days, AI leaders at Anthropic, OpenAI, and Microsoft had managed to instill fear in the public about the powerful technology they had created. Elon Musk, agreeing with Amodei's argument, stated that AI development must be pursued with extreme caution.