The US government on Monday announced further restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence chips and related technologies, further deepening the gap between the US and China. The new regulations limit the number of AI chips that can be exported to most countries and allow America’s closest allies unrestricted access to American technology, while restricting exports to China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
New rules unveiled in the final days of outgoing President Joe Biden will further help the Americans maintain their dominant status in AI by keeping a tight grip on the technologies at their disposal. The decree will enter into force within 120 days of its publication, so far it is not clear how the office of President-elect Donald Trump will enforce the new rules, but the two administrations think similarly about the danger posed by China.
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New restrictions on graphics processing units, i.e. GPUs, which are mostly made by Nvidia and AMD, are coming into effect for training AI models. Major cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon can apply for global licenses to build data centers, which exempts their projects from country quotas for AI chips. However, in order to obtain a license, companies must meet strict conditions and restrictions, including stricter safety standards and reporting obligations. With few exceptions, the rules impose global licensing requirements for certain chips, and even the most advanced “closed-weight” AI models are subject to stricter controls.
The regulation divides the world into three tiers: 18 allied countries are considered tier one countries, including Japan, Great Britain, South Korea, and the Netherlands, which are essentially exempt from the rules. And for Russia, China and Iran, which represent the second level, technology exports are completely secret, on top of that the sale of even the most powerful “closed” AI models becomes prohibited. The largest group, min the third level, which includes around 120 other countries, including Singapore, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, access to technologies is restricted. With all of this, the primary goal may be to prevent China from gaining access to chips through third countries, especially the Middle East.
In addition, an important change is that US-based providers such as AWS and Microsoft can deploy 50% of their total AI computing power outside the US, up to 25% outside each tier country, and no more than 7 percent to a single non-equal level country.
The move drew strong criticism from some industry players, Nvidia, for example, is not at all happy with the new rules, according to which the strictures would rather set American technologies back on the market and threaten the country’s leading role. Ken Glueck, Oracle’s executive vice president, stated at the time of the draft that the measure could go down in history as “one of the most harmful regulations of the American technology industry.”
Source: www.hwsw.hu
