The Biden administration today announced a bold and controversial new export control plan designed to curb advanced chips and artificial intelligence Models themselves from ending up in the hands of rivals eg china.
The administration’s new “AI diffusion rule” divides the world into countries that are allowed relatively unfettered access to America’s most advanced AI silicon and algorithms, and which will require special licenses to access the technology. The rule, which will be enforced by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, seeks to limit the speed of the most powerful AI models for the first time.
“The United States now leads the world in both AI development and AI chip design, and it’s important that we keep it that way,” US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said ahead of today’s announcement.
The list of trusted countries includes UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan.
Companies from other countries not subject to arms control will be able to acquire up to 1,700 of the latest AI chips without special permission, the rule says. They will be able to apply for a special license to get more chips, to build very large-scale datacenters using US technology, or to gain access to the most powerful closed model “weights” made by US firms. Companies will need adequate physical and cyber-security to obtain a license.
Supply chain activities including the design, manufacturing and storage of chips will be exempted from the regulation. Nor will the rule limit Open source AI model As the lamas of Meta, the administration says.
Countries with arms embargoes such as China, Iran and North Korea are already barred from receiving advanced chips. The new rule will for the first time limit their access to advanced models.
“Semiconductors that power [AI] And model weights, as we all know, are a dual-use technology,” Raimondo added before the announcement. “They are used in many commercial applications, but can also be used by our adversaries to run nuclear simulations, develop bioweapons and advance their forces.”
The rule is sure to cause controversy, however, as it could block international sales of AI at a critical moment for the industry. This comes just a week before Trump’s inauguration. The ruling sets a 120-day consultation period, meaning Donald Trump’s administration is expected to listen to input, perhaps revise the rule, and then implement it.
nvidiaThe The world’s leading manufacturer of AI chipsThe rule has been called “unprecedented and misleading”. A blog post. “Under the guise of an ‘anti-China’ measure, these regulations will do nothing to enhance US security. Rather than mitigating any threat, Biden’s new rules will only weaken America’s global competitiveness, undermining the innovation that has kept America ahead. “
Already in the US China restricts the export of advanced AI chipsThere is a major geopolitical rivalry, but companies there have been able to create cutting-edge algorithms using computer clusters located in other countries. Under the new regulation, China will not be able to manufacture so-called frontier AI models in other countries affected by the regulation.
