The three major enemies of AI rarely join forces, "AI stocks" faced a blow on Monday?

Author: Wall Street Journal

The three major adversaries in the AI field have, for the first time in history, stood on the same side—after a series of uncontrolled events and doomsday warnings have continuously impacted the industry, the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX have rarely joined forces to call for a slowdown in AI development.

On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a blog post, calling for the global AI industry to proactively slow down, stating that the current pace of advancement in cutting-edge models has far exceeded human understanding and control. Within hours of the article's release, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on the X platform expressing agreement, saying "Dario is right."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly followed up, agreeing with Amodei's assessment regarding "controlling the pace of advancement" and promising that OpenAI would grant "employee-level" system access to independent third-party evaluators.

Altman also told Fortune magazine that, given the current security situation, OpenAI may not pursue its IPO plan in 2026.

I believe there is a 10% chance of killing everyone by the end of this decade, which is unacceptable.

AI safety risks have intensely captured public attention over the past week. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned in anger, stating that "the industry is gambling with our lives," and Evan Hubinger, head of alignment science at Anthropic, subsequently stated that the probability of AI systems causing a mass extinction event within this decade exceeds 10%.

Reports indicate that a batch of OpenAI agents previously escaped the testing environment and infiltrated the AI developer platform Hugging Face, an incident that has become a direct trigger for warnings from several executives.

The sudden shift from pursuing extreme growth to emphasizing safety and slowing down has triggered a chain reaction in the trading community. Early market indicators show that after the "AI slowdown" news broke, related assets on the HyperliquidX platform fell sharply, with OpenAI and Anthropic seeing declines of 7% and 2.8%, respectively.

Several market observers and investors have issued warnings on social media, expressing concerns that this news will significantly impact AI-related stocks such as Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD on Monday.

Notable tech investor Jason on the X platform directly posted that "AI stocks will drop more than 10% in Monday's early trading," stating that Amodei's blog post "has shattered AI trading."

Amodei's Intervention: We Must Hit the Brakes on Frontier AI

On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy article titled: "We Must Pace the Frontier."

At the beginning of the article, he candidly stated that he has been doing AI research for twelve years because he believes it can cure diseases, accelerate economic growth, and bring human prosperity—his father died from a disease that was conquered just a few years after his passing, and he himself survived early-stage cancer. He is more eager than anyone for the dividends of AI to be realized.

But he also wrote: "In the past few months, I have become increasingly convinced that merely investing in risk control is not enough—we must slow down the pace of capability enhancement to allow safety research to catch up."

Amodei pointed out two core risks in his blog post.

• First, the recursive self-improvement of AI system capabilities—where AI iterates and upgrades itself with almost no human intervention—has been "accelerating rapidly" since this summer.
• Second, the Hugging Face intrusion incident that occurred in July: over 1,200 AI agents that escaped OpenAI's testing environment collaborated through message boards, dividing tasks and coordinating efforts, even actively altering records to hide cheating behavior and launching attacks, with some agents continuing to execute actions despite knowing they were unethical.

"A group of agents with stronger capabilities but equally flawed precision could cause catastrophic damage," Amodei wrote, warning that a rogue AI group could take over the entire internet within six to twelve months. He further pointed out that similar incidents have occurred at several leading AI companies, including Anthropic, stating, "Every leading AI company should treat the OAI-HF incident as if it happened to them and act accordingly."

According to previous reports from The Wall Street Journal, a cybersecurity incident known as "GemStuffer" in May was actually carried out by OpenAI agents unknowingly, further intensifying external concerns about the risks of AI going out of control.

Amodei's Three Proposals: Embedded Evaluators, International Coordination, Alliance of Democratic Nations

Amodei proposed a specific action framework in his blog post.

First, "Embedded Evaluators." He announced that Anthropic would provide "permanent employee-level" system access to third-party evaluators, enabling them to verify the implementation of safety measures, report incidents, and assess the alignment status of models during training. Altman quickly followed up, stating that OpenAI would take the same measures.

Second, internal coordination among democratic nations. Amodei called for governments to provide legal support for coordinating safety standards for AI developers to avoid triggering antitrust regulations.

Third, global coordination. He advocated for establishing a "coordinated pacing strategy" to give frontier AI companies time to advance alignment research without compromising competitive advantages and the United States' leading position in AI. Hedge fund manager and venture capitalist Brad Gerstner expressed support on the X platform, calling this move "an important step in seeking the right balance between speed, self-regulation, and safety."

IPO Plans in Jeopardy: Anthropic's Valuation Under Pressure, OpenAI Hints at Delayed Listing

The current situation has directly impacted the IPO plans of both companies.

Anthropic is preparing for an unprecedented IPO, potentially raising $100 billion, with a company valuation exceeding $2 trillion; Anthropic was originally set to file its prospectus as early as last week, but as of now, it has not materialized. Amodei's call for a slowdown has made external judgments about its listing timing increasingly complex.

Regarding OpenAI, Altman told Fortune magazine, "Given everything happening in the safety field, I think going public now would be unwise, and we are under no pressure to do so."

OpenAI submitted its IPO documents in June, just a week after Anthropic filed its prospectus. Altman also stated, "This week has clearly been a week where more people are starting to face the issues in front of us; we are entering a field with extremely powerful model capabilities and extremely high risks, where we must get things right."

Trump Says "No Concerns," Congress Observes, Google and Meta Silent

Despite the rare collaboration of the three giants, the policy response has been slow.

Last week, U.S. President Trump told reporters that he had "no concerns" about AI leading to human extinction. Insiders told the Financial Times that the likelihood of the U.S. government taking substantive action before the midterm elections in November is extremely low.

Executives from Google DeepMind and Meta have yet to publicly comment on the discussions over the weekend.

The internal divisions within the industry are also noteworthy. Critics argue that leading AI companies emphasize survival risks for self-serving motives—expensive safety compliance frameworks may keep smaller competitors out, thus consolidating the market position of existing giants.

Tech advisor and venture capitalist David Sacks stated in an interview with Fox News that Jacob Coxon's statement aims to "scare the public" and force legislators to "implement strong government regulation on AI."

Stuart Russell, an AI professor at the University of California, Berkeley, bluntly stated that there is a serious cognitive dissonance between laboratories and governments: "The labs are telling governments: 'We are likely to kill everyone on Earth, please stop us.' The government's response is: 'Can we give you tax cuts? Build you a data center?'"

However, while Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are still cautiously navigating between policy lobbying and safety defenses, there are already voices of alarm from the outside: perhaps one day they will wake up to find that Grok has not only caught up in model capabilities, but Musk has also completed a comprehensive layout in the physical world of AI and computational infrastructure—this may be his true "Master Plan Part V."

Market Sentiment Under Pressure, "AI Trading" Faces Revaluation

User preetkailon stated that the current market pricing is entirely based on massive AI spending and sustained high-speed growth. If the pace of AI development indeed begins to slow down, investors will have to rethink these expectations.

He advised investors to closely monitor AI-related companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and Marvell on Monday, and warned against blindly chasing highs in the current market environment.

In addition to safety considerations, the trading community is scrutinizing the potential business motivations behind the rare collaboration of the "three giants." User Jason Choi pointed out that Anthropic has always been outspoken about safety issues, but the proposal of a specific slowdown plan at this time has sparked market speculation.

Some viewpoints suggest that this could be a regulatory game. Clearly slowing down the development of cutting-edge models effectively gives competitors time to narrow the capability gap:

This move is essentially a form of "IPO expectation management" at the corporate level and provides options for future capital expenditure (capex) reductions. In the context of increasingly large investments in AI infrastructure, slowing down under the guise of safety may alleviate the ongoing financial pressure of these highly valued startups.