The Biden administration is poised to open up a new front in its effort to safeguard US AI from China with preliminary plans to place guardrails around the most advanced AI Models, the core software of artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, sources said, Reuters reported.
The Commerce Department is considering a new regulatory push to restrict the export of proprietary or closed source AI models, whose software and the data it is trained on are kept under wraps, three people familiar with the matter said.
Any action would complement a series of measures put in place over the last two years to block the export of sophisticated AI chips to China in an effort to slow Beijing's development of the cutting edge technology for military purposes. Even so, it will be hard for regulators to keep pace with the industry's fast-moving developments.
The Commerce Department declined to comment. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Reuters.
Currently, nothing is stopping US AI giants like Microsoft (MSFT.O), OpenAI, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), Google DeepMind and rival Anthropic, which have developed some of the most powerful closed source AI models, from selling them to almost anyone in the world without government oversight.
Government and private sector researchers worry US adversaries could use the models, which mine vast amounts of text and images to summarize information and generate content, to wage aggressive cyber attacks or even create potent biological weapons.
To develop an export control on AI models, the sources said the US may turn to a threshold contained in an AI executive order issued last October that is based on the amount of computing power it takes to train a model. When that level is reached, a developer must report its AI model development plans and provide test results to the Commerce Department.
That computing power threshold could become the basis for determining what AI models would be subject to export restrictions, according to two US officials and another source briefed on the discussions. They declined to be named because details have not been made public.
If used, it would likely only restrict the export of models that have yet to be released, since none are thought to have reached the threshold yet, though Google's Gemini Ultra is seen as being close, according to EpochAI, a research institute tracking AI trends.
The agency is far from finalizing a rule proposal, the sources stressed. But the fact that such a move is under consideration shows the US government is seeking to close gaps in its effort to thwart Beijing's AI ambitions, despite serious challenges to imposing a muscular regulatory regime on the fast-evolving technology.
As the Biden administration looks at competition with China and the dangers of sophisticated AI, AI models "are obviously one of the tools, one of the potential choke points that you need to think about here," said Peter Harrell, a former National Security Council official. "Whether you can, in fact, practically speaking, turn it into an export-controllable chokepoint remains to be seen," he added.
US Eyes Curbs on China's Access to AI Software
https://english.aawsat.com/world/5007901-us-eyes-curbs-chinas-access-ai-software
US Eyes Curbs on China's Access to AI Software
US Eyes Curbs on China's Access to AI Software
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