AI Safety Warnings From Tech Leaders Trigger Tech Stock Selloff

U.S. technology stocks fell sharply on Monday after leading artificial intelligence executives called for a slowdown in the development of powerful AI models, citing safety concerns. The rare public alignment among top industry figures triggered a broad selloff in semiconductor and AI-related companies, adding to market pressure from rising oil prices and expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike. The market reaction followed a weekend essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who argued that AI companies must "pace the frontier" to allow safety measures to keep pace with advancing capabilities. "Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence," Amodei wrote. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who leads the AI company xAI, publicly endorsed the message, marking a rare point of agreement among three of the industry's fiercest rivals. The selloff was swift and severe. In premarket trading, shares of Nvidia, a key supplier of AI chips, dropped more than 2%, while Intel and AMD fell nearly 6% and 5%, respectively. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index slumped about 6%.