Commentary: As SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic plan blockbuster IPOs, will it make them more accountable?

HOW MUCH MORE ACCOUNTABILITY SHOULD WE EXPECT?

The market is meant to incorporate all public information to arrive at the fair price of a public company.

In doing so, market listings should make it easier for investors to police AI safety. After all, it’s in investors’ interests to not drive humanity to the verge of collapse.

But is the market delivering on this function so far with AI?

So far, you’d have to say it’s not. For instance, the world’s second-largest stock exchange, the New York-based Nasdaq, controversially changed its own rules for SpaceX to join its Nasdaq 100 index after just 15 trading days, not the usual three months.

But perhaps there is still hope that investors’ own desire to survive AI will make them push companies to manage AI’s risks more responsibly.

Will it be enough? Probably not on its own. The risks most people worry about with AI – diffuse, slow-moving, hard to pin to a single quarter – may never register clearly in an earnings report.

But more disclosure is better than less. And more disclosure is exactly what these listings will finally force.

Marta Khomyn is Senior Lecturer in Finance and Data Analytics at Adelaide University. This article first appeared in The Conversation.