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The hot topic in September was the controversy stirred up by the major AI companies when they asked for government regulation, stating that AI is on the verge of becoming dangerous.  A manager of Anthropic’s technical staff predicted that there is greater than a 10 percent chance that AI could cause the extinction of the human race within the next decade.

This warning may have been dismissed if it were not for statements from OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, publicly claiming that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) had arrived with OpenAI's new Astra model.  

The dot com bubble of the late 1990s stemmed from the tremendous capital expenditures for laying fiber-optic cable in anticipation of the need from the country’s new internet. It wasn’t a mistake to make the investments. However, the problem was that the demand and profits did not come soon enough to realize adequate profits. Most went bankrupt, sending their inflated stocks crashing. The installed fiber was sold for pennies on the dollar to a new generation of companies who profited from what became today’s robust internet. This scenario is the primary risk of investing in the current AI boom.

Moderna (MRNA) skyrocketed today, more than doubling, up 177 percent, on the news of a successful Phase 3 melanoma trial. The combination of Moderna's vaccine with Merck's Keytruda significantly reduced the risk of melanoma returning or spreading compared with Keytruda alone. This was the first successful late-stage trial of an individualized mRNA cancer vaccine and validates Moderna's mRNA oncology platform for other cancers.

Qualcomm (QCOM) is being added to the Sound Advice portfolio. A complete explanation will follow in the next issue of Sound Advice scheduled to be published on the first of September, but we are adding QCOM now as a timely investment.

The stock price is down 34 percent from its peak of $250 in early June and is...