'The Big Short' Michael Burry: AI Giants Calling for Slowed Development Is 'Self-Serving', LLMs Won't Bring True AGI

BlockBeats news, September 14: Michael Burry, the real-life investor behind "The Big Short," posted a statement questioning recent calls by AI industry executives to slow the development of frontier AI, arguing that such remarks carry clear "self-interested" motives and saying humanity currently has "nothing to fear."

Burry argued that large language models (LLMs) are not equivalent to AI and will not be the path to achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), making it unnecessary to slow down. He also pointed out that slowing AI development would instead help industry giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic consolidate their advantages and suppress smaller competitors; at the same time, these giants' repeated emphasis on AI potentially bringing "human extinction-level risks" may also further generate market hype and build momentum for future IPOs and fundraising.

Burry has previously warned multiple times about problems in the AI industry, including excessive infrastructure investment, aggressive accounting, hidden debt, and circular financing. These latest remarks come as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calls for the industry to "slow down AI development," with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, xAI CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis successively expressing support.

In the market, concerns about slowing AI development have begun to hit related stocks. Nvidia fell about 3% at one point in premarket trading on Monday, while Intel, Micron, and SK Hynix all dropped more than 5%. Burry believes that, at least for now, LLMs such as Claude and ChatGPT will not possess true reasoning capabilities, so there is "nothing to fear."