AI-linked stocks slump after top lab CEOs call for slowing technology’s development
AI-linked stocks slump after top lab CEOs call for slowing technology’s development. You should listen to the warnings about AIAlex TurnerWe must stop companies from allowing AI to self-improve into an uncontrollable level of intelligence Major AI lab CEOs advocated for slowing the pace of AI development this weekend.
What happened
On Sunday, Trump once again rejected calls for slowing down AI development while citing competition from China and telling reporters “whoever wins AI, wins”. Photograph: Dado Ruvić/ReutersAnalysis‘Too little, too late’: critics perplexed and suspicious of AI leaders’ call for a slowdownRobert Booth UK technology editorFrom the Trump administration to AI experts, plans by the Anthropic boss to boost safety have spawned a largely negative response OpenAI boss and Elon Musk back slowdown on ‘reckless’ AI development Editorial: controlling AI – humanity cannot outsource its survival The safety debate that ignited when whistleblowers last week warned that the most advanced AI poses an existential threat to humanity should come with a health warning: side effects include whiplash.
Photograph: Bhawika Chhabra/ReutersAI CEOs say they need to slow the pace of development. After apocalyptic warnings about the threats posed by AI, leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s calls to ‘slow the pace’Facing a public uproar over Anthropic researchers’ repeated warnings that artificial intelligence could kill all of humanity by 2030, the AI company’s CEO, Dario Amodei, issued a proposal at the weekend to slow down the technology’s advancement to ensure public safety.
The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis and xAI owner Elon Musk posted support for Amodei’s proposal for slowing AI development, titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” with Altman stating he would match Amodei’s commitment to embedding outside evaluators within his company to verify safety practices. View image in fullscreenElon Musk, CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have said AI firms should slow down the development of the powerful technology.
While AI companies have made grandiose claims about the threats and benefits from their technology, they have also historically provided little transparency or oversight into how their models operate and spent millions in lobbying efforts to shape favorable legislation.
The wider picture
He added: “We need an immediate, indefinite, international moratorium on frontier AI development. ”Explore more on these topicsAI (artificial intelligence)Technology sectorComputingAnthropicOpenAITrump administrationanalysisShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed The 27-year-old's former boss, Anthropic head Dario Amodei, recently called for AI development to slow down – though some have questioned the motivations behind this. Anthropic boss Dario Amodei calls for AI development to slow downPublished2 days agoThe hardest question to answer, according to Coxon, was what an AI apocalypse would look like.
AI researchers call this a “misalignment” between what OpenAI wanted and what the AI actually prioritized. Before ChatGPT existed, I defended my PhD dissertation called “On Avoiding Power-Seeking by Artificial Intelligence”. The progress would enter a feedback loop called “recursive self-improvement. ”Recursive self-improvement could quickly yield AIs that are intelligent beyond our comprehension. In 2023, the CEOs of some of the best AI labs signed a public statement that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war. ” Another signer: Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel prize-winning scientist who architected the modern AI revolution.
More specifically, the AI Futures Project’s “Plan A” is a credible starting proposal that limits AI harms while allowing fast AI progress to continue to benefit the world.
What has been reported
On 12 September, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, and OpenAI advocated for pacing AI development. Amodei and others in the industry have made similar calls for global coordination in the past, even before the industry’s recent warnings over models becoming too advanced and gaining autonomy. The AI industry, especially the factions within it that focus on whether the technology is aligned with humanity’s interests, has also long warned about its existential threats. The result of the AI industry’s narrative that it is too powerful, complex and lucrative of a technology to regulate, critics say, is that it has been allowed to essentially govern itself.
Alex Bores, a proponent of AI regulation whose failed bid for Congress spurred $24m in spending both for and against his campaign from AI-linked political action committees, warned that the AI lobby often seeks to undermine legislation while claiming to support regulation. The proposal’s calls for international coordination around AI and federal intervention also run up against president Donald Trump and his administration’s vows to turn the US into the dominant AI superpower regardless of safety concerns.
The Trump administration has often framed AI development as a zero-sum contest against China for technological supremacy, an argument the AI industry itself has also promoted in the face of proposed government regulation. Skip to main contentSkip to navigation The easiest way not to build super-intelligence is for Anthropic to agree not to build it, said David Sacks, co-chair of Trump’s council of advisers on science and technology.
What happens next
Yes, he was talking about artificial superintelligence – an as-yet-nonexistent version of the technology that outcompetes humans in most domains – but his comments, and the chorus of experts that echoed him, jangled plenty of nerves. Another lurch came when Anthropic revealed it had found users dodging controls to use its existing models “in ways that could support biological weapons development” – think novel mosquito-borne or bird flu viruses. It was all enough to make lawmakers in London and Washington demand brakes and bans on the most potentially dangerous types of AI development.
“If they were to pull away from us on AI, then nothing else would matter. ”People close to Trump also wonder why Amodei and the rest of the AI leaders do not get on with pacing AI development themselves. Sacks is co-chair of Trump’s council of advisers on science and technology. skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system,” he told Amodei.
Another criticism of Amodei’s call for “pacing” of AI progress to allow safety measures and guardrails to keep up has came from Prof Stuart Russell, one of the world’s leading AI experts. Figure caption, 'There is a possibility of human extinction,' former Anthropic employee says about AIByBrandon Livesay and Mitchell Labiak, business reporterPublished13 September 2026An artificial intelligence researcher who quit AI firm Anthropic has said people working on the technology were "genuinely frightened" about the speed of its advancements and what it could mean for humanity.
The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across theguardian.com, bbc.co.uk. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.