‘AI Blowback’ Angst Grips ESG Investors Who Bet Big on Tech (1)

ESG fund managers who turned to big tech as a low-carbon, high-return bet are growing increasingly anxious over the sector’s experimentation with artificial intelligence.

Exposure to AI now represents a “short-term risk to investors,” said Marcel Stotzel, a London-based portfolio manager at Fidelity International.

Stotzel said he’s “worried we’ll get an AI blowback,” which he describes as a situation in which something unexpected triggers a meaningful market decline. “It takes just one incident for something to go wrong and the material impact could be significant,” he said.

Examples that Stotzel says warrant concern are fighter jets with self-learning AI ...