TOKYO — Global shares were trading mostly lower Tuesday, after artificial-intelligence stocks slid overnight.
France’s CAC 40 dipped 0.8 per cent in early trading to 8,055.86, while the German DAX dropped 0.8 per cent to 25,248.75. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged down nearly 0.8 per cent to 10,615.45.
U.S. shares were set to drift lower with Dow futures down 0.7 per cent at 52,505.00. S&P 500 futures shed 0.6 per cent to 7,650.50.
In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 surged in morning trading then lost those earlier gains in afternoon trading, to finish little changed, down less than 0.1 per cent at 63,484.10.
Softbank Group, the Japanese giant that is a major investor of OpenAI, jumped 7.5 per cent in Tokyo trading, recouping its overnight losses.
The decline came after OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said in an interview with Fortune published Saturday that the company behind ChatGPT would likely wait until next year for a sale of its stock on Wall Street. That would delay a potential gusher of cash for Softbank and other early investors in OpenAI.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.9 per cent to 8,672.50. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.9 per cent to 6,627.26. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 1.0 per cent to 24,667.24. The Shanghai Composite lost 0.5 per cent to 3,864.28.
Also weighing on markets are comments from other leaders of the AI industry that warned a slowdown is needed for the safety of humanity.
“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, analyst at Mizuho Bank, said in a report.
AI stocks have been under pressure because of worries their prices shot too high in the frenzy around the technology. The concerns jumped to another level over the weekend after one of the industry’s leading voices, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for a deliberate and global slowdown in the development of AI.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 2.19 per cent to US$103.61 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 2.13 per cent to $107.93 a barrel.
Oil prices have continued to climb as fighting in the Middle East keeps squeezing the global flow of crude. An important Saudi oil pipeline will mostly be out of service for weeks following an attack last week, two regional officials told The Associated Press.
The pipeline offered a way for Saudi Arabia to shift exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian attacks have stifled the movement of oil tankers.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar edged up to 154.99 Japanese yen from 154.30 yen. The euro cost $1.1533, down from $1.1557.
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Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press
