By Niket Nishant and Tharuniyaa LakshmiBengaluru — Futures tracking the Nasdaq 100 index led early declines on Monday, dragged by a selloff in AI heavyweights after top US executives called for a slowdown in the development of AI technology, citing safety concerns.Shares of Nvidia fell more than 2% in premarket trading, while “Magnificent Seven” peer Amazon lost 1%.Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Saturday called on AI companies to slow the pace at which they advance model capabilities. Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and ​OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said they agreed with Amodei.The declines reflect waning exuberance after a frenzied race to develop increasingly capable AI models gives way to a sober reassessment.Billions of dollars poured into AI have powered a stratospheric rise in some technology and semiconductor stocks and have been critical to strong equity market gains over the past few years.Read: Trump dismisses ‘very negative forces’ warning over AI risksAt 6.47am ET, Dow E-minis fell 81 points, or 0.15%, S&P 500 E-minis shed 51.75 points, or 0.68%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis lost 458.75 points, or 1.56%.Chipmakers declined, with Intel, AMD and Marvell Technology down 5.5%, 5.1% and 7%, respectively.Shares of US software stocks, which have been dampened by concerns that AI could disrupt their businesses, climbed. ServiceNow, Adobe and Workday were up 4.3%, 2.4% and 2.6%, respectively.Doomsday scepticismConcerns about the potential harms of AI intensified when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned last week and said the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”Still, some investors urged scepticism about doomsday pronouncements.Michael Burry, known for his successful bets against the US housing market in 2008, posted on X that the warnings were an attempt by major players to stifle smaller competitors.Annex Wealth Management chief economic strategist Brian Jacobsen also questioned if the statements were credible.“The strongest arguments for caution are those grounded in evidence, not fear. We should be wary both of incumbent firms seeking to protect their position and of confident predictions about outcomes that no one can reliably quantify,” Jacobsen said.Still, losses in technology stocks could set the tone for markets ahead of a potential interest-rate hike later in the week, with traders pricing in a nearly 89% chance of a rate increase by the US Federal Reserve, according to CME’s FedWatch.Sentiment was already weakened after data last week showed US inflation was accelerating.Oil prices are also trading at levels not seen since May. Brent crude futures rose 2.5% to $107.28 on Monday, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures advanced 2.3% to $102.39.Reuters