In their final week in office, President Joe Biden’s team announced a broad set of new guidelines for exporting U.S.-manufactured artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
The “Interim Final Rule on AI”, declared on Monday, promises to clarify exportation rules for U.S. allies and streamline licensing processes for chip orders. Nevertheless, it also imposes new sale restrictions on a wide array of nations.
According to CNN, nations are now classified into three categories, based on their diplomatic relationship with the U.S. First are close allies like Japan and South Korea, who remain unaffected. Second are adversaries such as China and Russia, facing heightened constraints in buying advanced AI chips. The final group, consisting of countries not falling into the ally or enemy category, will be restricted to purchasing 50,000 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) each.
This categorization system impacts non-ally, non-adversary nations like Mexico, Portugal, and Israel the most. While this approach constrains countries like China and Russia from acquiring chips indirectly, it inevitably hinders local AI developments.
American tech giant Nvidia openly criticized these regulations, branding them as “precedented and misguided” and claiming they may inhibit global innovation and economic expansion.
Given the Biden administration’s earlier AI policies from October 2022 and October 2023, these current amendments hold a 120-day comment period but will be effective sooner. As the political landscape shifts with the coming new administration, however, the dynamic surrounding chip export rules may change drastically.
Original source: Read the full article on TechCrunch
