Fears of Uncontrolled AI Development Hit Markets as Stocks Fall

Calls by artificial intelligence industry leaders to slow down the development of the technology have shaken financial markets. Shares of AI-linked companies fell sharply on Monday in Asia and Europe.

In South Korea, chipmaker Hynix lost 6.4%, while Samsung Electronics fell 4.1%. In Japan, SoftBank, one of the main investors in OpenAI, lost more than 10%.

The fall continued in Europe. German semiconductor company Infineon fell 7.6%, while Dutch giant ASML lost 5.2%. The decline came after the public debate opened by Anthropic chief Dario Amodei. He called for the development of more powerful AI models to be slowed down and monitored more closely. According to Amodei, a slowdown of one or two years could reduce the risk of the technology going out of control.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman also joined the concerns. He declared that current standards are not yet at the right level to push artificial intelligence capabilities much further. Elon Musk also backed Amodei’s stance, declaring that the Anthropic chief was right.

The debate intensified after the departure from Anthropic of researcher Jacob Coxon, who had previously worked at OpenAI. He claimed that the people developing the most advanced AI systems are seriously concerned about future risks.

U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has downplayed the concerns, insisting that the country that wins the artificial intelligence race will have the global advantage.

Investors’ attention has now shifted toward Wall Street, while early indicators signal a fall for the Nasdaq as well, the index dominated by tech companies.