Asian shares trade mixed as markets continue to watch AI stocks and oil prices

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were trading mixed early Tuesday, after a rtificial-intelligence stocks slid overnight.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 0.8% in morning trading to 63,993.22.

Softbank Group, the Japanese giant that is a major investor of OpenAI, jumped more than 8% in Tokyo morning trading, recouping its overnight losses. That 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% to 8,672.10. South Korea's Kospi was little changed, inching down less than 0.1% to 6,681.32. Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 0.2% to 24,879.69. The Shanghai Composite added 0.1% to 3,889.95.

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.

Gains for many stocks outside AI helped limit the market’s losses on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 152 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 0.6% after clawing back most of an early loss of 1.3%.

AI stocks have been under pressure a while 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.

He cited safety issues, including the risk that AI becomes capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.

Nvidia, whose profits have soared because its chips are helping to train AI models, sank 3.4% and was the heaviest weight on Wall Street Monday because of its massive size. SpaceX, which gets a chunk of its business from AI, fell 2% after Elon Musk said over the weekend that he agrees with Amodei.

All told, the S&P 500 slipped 37.00 points to 7,619.98. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 152.09 to 52,421.20, and the Nasdaq composite fell 146.62 to 26,186.41.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 1.36% to $102.77 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 1.17% to $106.92 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.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury briefly breached the 5.00% level during the morning for the first time in nearly three years. But the 10-year yield later pulled back to 4.98% after oil prices came off their highs for the day.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar edged up to 154.81 Japanese yen from 154.30 yen. The euro cost $1.1537, down from $1.1557.

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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report.