AI Fears Proliferate After Viral Social Media Post
Without the artificial intelligence boom, the U.S. economy and stock market would be much weaker than they are today. In fact, artificial intelligence capital expenditures and related tech investments currently account for roughly 50% of U.S. gross domestic product. Meanwhile, if Wall Street investors account for the indirect value-add, the impact is even more staggering. As a result of the AI boom, S&P 500 earnings are expected to explode 34% in 2026, more than double the 15% growth expected at the start of the year. How impressive is the current S&P 500 earnings growth? The U.S. stock market has never registered this magnitude of earnings growth outside of post-recession rebounds.
Image Source: Charlie Bilello, Creative Planning
However, over the weekend, Jacob Coxon, a former OpenAI and Anthropic researcher and employee, sent fears into Wall Street investors and the AI trade with a viral social media post that read:
“I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing. The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible – but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
The post, shared on X, is one of the most viral posts of all time, registering 170 million impressions in five days. Meanwhile, several high-profile accounts responded to the X post. For instance, Senator Bernie Sanders argued that world leaders should ban superintelligence. Meanwhile, Patrick Bet-David, a prominent podcaster and entrepreneur, tweeted that “Monday could be a bloodbath for the stock market.”
Why Investors Should Be Suspicious of AI Doom
Although AI “Terminator” fears have long been a part of the AI lexicon, investors should take them with a grain of salt and read the tea leaves. David Sacks, former “AI Czar” for the Trump Administration, explained why AI watchers should be suspicious. First, Sacks pointed out that the sudden viral explosion of Coxon’s X thread was likely engineered, noting suspicious metrics. Until his viral AI thread, Jacob Coxon had never tweeted. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that an unknown user would get more than 100 million impressions on his first post. Second, within 15 minutes, AI safety groups heavily boosted Coxon’s thread. Third, Coxon provided no concrete data and evidence as to why AI innovation should be stopped. Finally, reports say Coxon only worked at Anthropic for ~3 weeks. In other words, it’s highly unlikely he would be able to draw such a rash conclusion from such a short tenure.
AI Fear-Mongering: A Ploy for Regulatory Capture?
The All-In team speculated that, with midterms approaching quickly, the fear-mongering is likely a ploy by the top AI firms to influence AI regulations and lock in monopoly status. Although pure speculation, the timing certainly makes sense. Recently, AI leader NVIDIA (NVDA) acquired open-source AI leader Hugging Face for $12/93 billion. The NVIDIA acquisition could fundamentally threaten the business of closed frontier model labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet (GOOGL).
Watch AI-Related Stocks
Regardless of one’s opinion on the matter, leading AI stocks like Nebius Group (NBIS), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and CoreWeave (CRWV) will be on close watch this week. For now, an AI slowdown seems highly unlikely. In recent comments, President Trump downplayed AI risks and said, “We’re leading China on AI, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.”
Bottom Line
While the sudden and suspicious warnings of existential AI risk can cause short-term market volatility, investors should temper their fear. Potentially orchestrated headlines and regulatory capture are currently clouding investor sentiment.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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