Shares of companies involved in artificial intelligence (AI) fell at the start of Asian trading on September 14. This came after executives from leading U.S. AI labs stated that the pace of AI technology development needed to be slowed due to growing risks and a global threat to humanity, according to Reuters.

Reaction of Asian Markets

At the start of trading in Japan on Monday, shares of SoftBank, an investor in OpenAI, plummeted 11.2%, while shares of memory chip maker Kioxia fell 6.1%, while shares of semiconductor equipment supplier Tokyo Electron declined by 0.68%.

On the Taipei Stock Exchange, shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the largest contract semiconductor manufacturer, fell 1.2%. In South Korea, shares of memory chip maker SK Hynix fell 6.5%, while shares of tech giant Samsung Electronics dropped 4%.

In Shanghai, shares of memory chip maker CXMT fell 3.6%, while shares of China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, dropped 3%.

In Hong Kong, shares of Zhongji Innolight, a manufacturer of optical components for data centers, fell 5.2%, while shares of the AI startup Minimax dropped 6%. Shares of Z.ai, an AI model developer, plummeted 7.3%.

What People Are Saying in the Market

"Selling pressure is likely to weigh on AI- and semiconductor-related stocks in Tokyo following a series of comments over the weekend calling for a slowdown in the pace of AI development," — noted Takayuki Miyajima, a senior economist at Sony Financial Group, in a note to clients (as quoted by Reuters). He also added that“uncertainty surrounding the war in the Middle East,” among other factors, is putting pressure on Asian tech stocks. On September 14, oil prices surged by more than 3%—Brent traded above $108 per barrel at its intraday high.

Context

On September 12, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the AI industry to slow down the development of advanced neural networks and agents in order to reduce the risk of “catastrophic harm.” He warned that, given the accelerating pace of AI development, AI agents—which carried out an attack on the Hugging Face platform in July—"could be capable of taking over the entire internet" in as little as 6 to 12 months. “We need to slow down the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” said the head of Anthropic. “Progress will still seem rapid, and we must use the time we gain from this slowdown wisely.”

"Dario is right," commented Elon Musk—CEO of the aerospace and AI corporation SpaceX, a division of which is developing the Grok chatbot—in response to Amodei's remarks.

“I agree with Dario that we need to regulate the pace of development of cutting-edge AI models,” said Sam Altman, CEO of Anthropic’s main competitor, OpenAI. “Over the past few weeks, this topic has been a major focus of our discussions at OpenAI. The idea of bringing in independent experts and giving them access to the systems at a level comparable to that of our employees is excellent. We’ll do the same,” Altman said regarding a possible slowdown in the pace of AI development.

Meanwhile, the Chinese state-run newspaper *Global Times* criticized Amodei’s call. The newspaper called his initiative a “Cold War scenario” whose true goal is to curb the development of AI in China, preserve Washington’s technological dominance, and exclude Beijing from the global technology governance system, according to Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump also spoke out against slowing down AI technology: The U.S. leads in the field of AI and must maintain its advantage over China, because “whoever wins in AI will win,” he told reporters.

On September 10, Anthropic published a report analyzing AI threats. The report details how various malicious actors have used its AI model, Claude, for a wide range of purposes—from cyber operations and fraud to surveillance and weapons development, Reuters reports. Concerns about the potential harm posed by artificial intelligence intensified following the dismissal of AI researcher Jacob Coxon from Anthropic. He stated that “the people building AI sincerely believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”