Asian shares traded mostly lower Tuesday after artificial intelligence-related stocks fell on Wall Street amid growing concerns over high valuations and the pace of AI development.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 surged in morning trading but gave up some of its gains in the afternoon, rising 0.2% to 63,621.08.
SoftBank Group, a major investor in OpenAI, gained about 8% in afternoon trading in Tokyo, recovering its losses from the previous session.
The earlier decline followed comments by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an interview with Fortune published Saturday. Altman said the company behind ChatGPT would likely wait until next year before selling its shares on Wall Street. The delay could postpone a potential large cash windfall for SoftBank and other early OpenAI investors.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.9% to 8,668.30, while South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.8% to 6,628.99. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.6% to 24,773.37 and the Shanghai Composite fell 0.2% to 3,876.25.
Markets were also affected by warnings from some AI industry leaders that the rapid development of the technology may need to slow down for safety reasons.
“The prospect of a coordinated slowdown in AI development remains uncertain, given intense competition both among U.S. firms and between the U.S. and China,” Ng Jing Wen, an analyst at Mizuho Bank, said in a report.
Gains in many non-AI stocks helped limit losses on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 152.09 points, or 0.3%, to 52,421.20, while the Nasdaq composite dropped 146.62 points, or 0.6%, to 26,186.41. The S&P 500 declined 37 points to 7,619.98.
AI stocks have faced pressure for some time amid concerns that their prices had risen too sharply during the technology boom. Those concerns intensified over the weekend after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a deliberate global slowdown in AI development.
Amodei cited safety concerns, including the possibility that AI could become capable of directing a swarm of agents that might take control of the entire internet within six to 12 months.
Nvidia, whose profits have surged as its chips are used to train AI models, fell 3.4% and was the biggest drag on Wall Street Monday because of its huge market value. SpaceX, which also earns part of its business from AI, dropped 2% after Elon Musk said he agreed with Amodei.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 1.84% to $103.26 a barrel, while Brent crude, the international benchmark, gained 1.52% to $107.29.
Oil prices have continued to rise as fighting in the Middle East disrupts global crude supplies. A major Saudi oil pipeline is expected to remain largely out of service for weeks after an attack last week, two regional officials told The Associated Press.
The pipeline allowed Saudi Arabia to shift oil exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian attacks have disrupted tanker traffic.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury briefly rose above 5% during morning trading, reaching the level for the first time in nearly three years. It later eased to 4.98% as oil prices moved down from their daily highs.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 154.78 Japanese yen from 154.30 yen. The euro fell to $1.1541 from $1.1557.