What happened
Shares of C3.ai (AI 0.51%), a provider of enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software, jumped this morning and were up by 4.4% as of 11:38 a.m. ET.
It appears that investors may have taken a liking to the stock today after some technology experts urged a temporary slowdown in AI development. Oddly enough, investors may have taken the suggestion as further proof of the long-term viability of AI tools, pushing C3.ai's stock higher.
So what
Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, researchers at the AI start-up DeepMind, and other technology experts published an open letter to the AI development community asking them to temporarily slow down further experimentation of advanced AI systems to assess how they will impact humans and their jobs.
NYSE: AI
Key Data Points
The letter says that "contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks" and asks whether AI developers should be automating jobs away, or flooding information channels with potential propaganda.
The letter says:
We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium.
This is in reference to OpenAI's large language model, ChatGPT, which was released to the public months ago and has since been integrated into many of Microsoft's services, including Bing search and Microsoft 365. ChatGPT quickly became popular after its release and reached 100 million monthly active users in just two months.
While the letter urged caution about AI, some investors may be looking at it as proof that artificial intelligence is the next big thing and that C3.ai could benefit.
Now what
While some AI stocks are seemingly having their day in the sun right now, investors may want to take a cautious approach to C3.ai. The company's share price has been very volatile over the past month and is down about 70% since its initial public offering in late 2020.
That doesn't mean the company won't benefit from the rise of AI, but the market is still in its infancy and it's unclear how some companies will benefit from it and what potential oversight governments could have on AI down the road.
