AI is supposedly going to kill us all, but at least it’s doing wonders for the stocks for a few multibillion-dollar companies.
Mounting fears over the technology’s existential risks reached a fever pitch over the weekend, tanking AI chip stocks across the globe.
This earthshattering discussion had a curious aftershock, though. Instead of double-checking their fortified bunkers, investors poured even more money into Microsoft, Google, and Meta Platforms — the biggest AI hyperscalers, or companies that operate the largest data centers — which were up by more than two percent on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported. All remain up by a few percentage points over the past five days.
These gains may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but they did result in the WSJ publishing what CNBC correspondent Eamon Javers called a “subhead for the ages.”
“Talk of heading off artificial intelligence’s potential role in destroying humanity hurt some stocks and helped others,” it read. There are winners and losers in every scenario, in other words — including humanity’s extinction.
Fears that AI advancements could spell doom for our species have been running high after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned last week and accused the company of “gambling with our lives,” sending shockwaves through the tech industry.
Coxon’s warning came after months of leading AI labs, including Anthropic, each coming out to say that their powerful agentic systems had been able to break out of containment and launch cyberattacks in the real world.
Talk of slowing down AI development quickly spread from Silicon Valley to Washington, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei intensified these calls on Saturday in a lengthy essay urging other AI companies to cooperate. Elon Musk, who runs SpaceXAI, and Sam Altman, the CEO OpenAI, both came out in agreement.
Some experts are skeptical of these apocalyptic claims from AI leaders, wondering if there might be an ulterior motive. The likes of Anthropic have long been accused of using fear-mongering as a marketing tactic. Whatever’s going on, it seems that the industry is doing its best to keep the narrative around the tech within its control.
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