Anthropic, OpenAI CEOs driven by 'Machiavellian' motives, tech analyst says

D.A. Davidson tech analyst Gil Luria has an important callout for investors amid scary headlines from AI masterminds Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) CEO Sam Altman.

That is, neither has said publicly that they will change anything right now that upends their companies' torrid growth, which is fueling the tech ecosystem.

"They're being Machiavellian here," Luria said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid (video above). "They're clearly very competent individuals that have grown their companies to this size. So I don't doubt their qualifications. I just doubt their motivations because … neither of them actually said we are slowing down the development of AI. They both said, if everybody slows down, we will slow down."

Over the course of two days, Amodei and Altman have managed to scare investors about the powerful technology they created and have pushed their teams to supercharge it.

"Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up," Amodei stated in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday. "We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain."