Global tech shares slide as Nasdaq futures drop 1.5%
Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher, publicly posted a resignation message on social media this week.
“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon wrote. “This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
Coxon said he spent three years doing research for Anthropic and OpenAI. “Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote.
Days later, Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, published an essay over the weekend saying that AI developers risk “losing control of AI systems” and urging developers to “pace” the advancement of the technology.
Microsoft followed suit on Monday, publishing a draft code of conduct emphasizing a “humanist” approach to AI development “in service of humanity.”
“The purpose of technology is to serve humanity and accelerate human flourishing,” the Microsoft announcement reads. “Any technology that doesn’t achieve that is a failure, and it should be rejected. That is the starting point of our approach at Microsoft AI, where we’re building towards Humanist AI, one that is subordinate, aligned and contained.”
The warnings coincided with a global selloff in technology shares on Monday. Nasdaq futures dropped 1.5%. Nvidia shares were down more than 3% on the Nasdaq Monday morning, and Intel fell nearly 6%. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange’s semiconductor index, a key measure of computer chip manufacturing companies, declined 5.5%.
Abroad, SoftBank, a key investor in OpenAI, fell 11% in Japan. South Korea’s KOSPI index declined 3.3%. ASML, a Dutch semiconductor manufacturer, fell 6%.
Leaders in the AI space have issued warnings in the past week about the rapid development of the technology.