The risks of disaster are real. But who wants to give up those massive stock valuations?

Can we trust Skynet? Or is the AI industry is playing Russian roulette with the human race?

The titans of the booming artificial-intelligence industry have sounded a three-alarm fire, warning that AI poses an existential risk to the human race and urging a global slowdown in the breakneck pace of development.

Dario Amodei, the head of $965 billion giant Anthropic and developer of the Claude AI chatbot, warned of the risks over the weekend in an extensive post on his company's website. Sam Altman, the CEO of $852 billion rival OpenAI, which owns Chat GPT, agreed. So too did Elon Musk, whose SpaceX (SPCX) empire is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in its Grok AI venture.

Some people may wonder why it took them so long to reach this point. Science-fiction writers had worked out decades ago that once super computers could think for themselves, they might no longer need us - and might no longer be our friends.

What will happen when Skynet becomes self-aware? Nobody knows. The AI industry is playing Russian roulette with the human race.

As the bestseller "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies" pointed out last year, the companies creating these digital Frankenstein monsters don't even know how they operate.

But if there is every reason to slow AI development, there are about 40 trillion reasons why this probably won't happen.

That is the estimate of the number of dollars around the world already invested in the so-called "AI ecosystem," which is the pretentious finance way of talking about all the companies in the AI and ancillary industries.

That number, incidentally, comes from Gemini, the AI chatbot owned by Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL).

Anthropic's Claude puts the figure somewhat lower, at $25 trillion to "$30+ trillion," while OpenAI's Chat GPT puts it at $25 trillion to $30 trillion.

These include any number of household-name technology giants whose stocks have been borne aloft to epic valuations by AI hopes and ambitions. They are led by chip maker Nvidia (NVDA), now valued at more than $5 trillion, and include Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet, Meta (META), Broadcom (AVGO), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) and others.

The valuations of these companies show up in the investment portfolios of every wealthy person in America, every rich and powerful institution, and most of the 401(k) plans of the middle class as well. Harvard University's endowment just disclosed a $2.2 billion stake in SpaceX.

Big AI companies now account for about 30% of the value of the S&P 500 SPX. And that index has rocketed by an astonishing 90% in value since OpenAI launched ChatGPT nearly four years ago, igniting a market boom - or mania.

Do you think investors are going to write off these massive AI windfalls, or write them down? Most of these stocks rely on AI developing at crazy speeds just to justify the current prices, let alone any growth.

That's not to mention all those people - apparently led by President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent - who are counting on AI to produce such magical economic growth that Social Security and Medicare won't need to be cut, while taxes won't have to be restored to their 2000 balanced-budget levels.

In other words, half or most of our country - including most of the elite - are now living in castles in the air that are based, almost entirely, on dreams of magical AI that will avoid any hard choices, let alone any sacrifices on their part.

Do you think they are going to fall on their swords? Dream on.

It is no surprise that Trump rejected any calls for a slowdown, which he would consider weak and unmanly.

Oh, on a completely unrelated topic, the Trump family is looking to profit from the growth of AI - see here and here. (What were the odds?)

The Chinese government is also rejecting any idea of a slowdown.

So the chances of this happening in any meaningful way are slim at best.

The best that the rest of us can do, like unwilling participants in a game of Russian roulette, is shut our eyes and hope. Do you feel lucky?

-Brett Arends