The trader who predicted "Black Monday" compared AI to a "Category 6 hurricane"

Billionaire and founder of the hedge fund Tudor Investment Corporation, Paul Tudor Jones, has sounded the alarm over the rapid development of AI. He wrote about this in a column for The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Jones is known for predicting the 1987 market crash, when the Dow Jones index lost more than 20% in a single day. Now he has pointed to serious problems that, in his view, could arise as AI technologies develop at an increasingly rapid pace and potentially spiral out of human control.

Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones expressed concerns about the rapid development of AI after on September 9, Evan Hubinger, a leading security researcher at Anthropic, acknowledged that artificial intelligence has the potential to cause catastrophic harm to humanity as early as the next decade.

“One of the leading technologists stated that a solution to the problem of nuclear fusion—which would provide cheap, clean energy and save our planet—could emerge as early as the next five years,” Jones wrote in his column. “But everything else looks ominous, as if we’re bracing for a Category 6 hurricane” (the official hurricane scale ends at Category 5; thus, Jones is referring to a natural disaster the likes of which humanity has never experienced).

His article in the WSJ appeared amid a series of high-profile warnings about the dangers of AI, according to Business Insider. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon left the company this week and wrote on X that Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives” by competing to create increasingly powerful AI systems. OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki recently wrote in the company’s blog that no one is prepared for the consequences that further AI progress will have for humanity and recommended slowing down the development of artificial intelligence.

Jones cited both of these statements to support his own position. According to him, AI is on its way to becoming an independent geopolitical force—a “third superpower” on par with the U.S. and China. “The threat is real and requires coordinated action by the U.S. and China,” he said. “Both countries must agree on a timeline for bringing the development and proliferation of AI under control so that it proceeds in a safe, controlled, and interpretable manner.”

Such a grim warning stands in stark contrast to Jones’s previous assessment of AI’s impact on financial markets. In May, he predicted two more years of growth in the AI market, making it clear that he saw significant potential for investors, Business Insider notes.

Now, however, in his column, Jones calls on world leaders—above all, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping—to work together to ensure proper regulation of AI and prevent the technology from spiraling out of human control. A meeting between the leaders of the U.S. and China is scheduled for September 24 in Washington.

As a clear example of the threat that AI could pose as such systems become more autonomous, Jones cited recent attacks by OpenAI's autonomous agents on the AI startup Hugging Face.

“A new superpower is about to enter the arena—one that is unknowable, boundless, and potentially more powerful than the U.S. and China, both individually and combined,” added Tudor Jones, speaking about AI. “I hope Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi realize this when they meet. They must make AI security a top priority for the remainder of their terms in office.”

Jones's column was published after the AI startup OpenAI announced a week earlier that it had achieved AGI—a general level of artificial intelligence capable of matching or surpassing humans.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor