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With a week left in office, President Joe Biden introduced a new set of guidelines and restrictions for the export of US-made AI chips.
On Monday, the administration announced its Interim Final Rule on AI diffusion. This ruling is intended to “provide clarity to allied and partner nations on how they can benefit from AI” and streamline licensing hurdles for chip orders, according to a White House press release. But these rules also introduce new restrictions on the sale of chips in most countries around the world.
These new guidelines divide the countries into three groups, according to report from CNN.
The first group includes the US’s strongest allies, such as Japan and South Korea, which are not affected by the new restrictions. The second group includes countries such as China and Russia. These countries cannot buy advanced AI chips and now face more restrictions under the new guidelines regarding most “closed” AI models. The third group, which covers most of the world, will now have caps on how many chips they can buy. The cap is set at 50,000 graphics processing units per country, but there are numerous ways a country can access a higher quota.
This third group of countries that are neither America’s strongest allies nor enemies, which includes places like Mexico, Portugal and Israel, among many others, are arguably the most affected by the changes, CNN he said. The restrictions on this group of countries are intended to prevent adversaries like China and Russia from buying chips through them, but also hurt the adoption of AI in these countries in the process.
Nvidia released a statement On Monday he called the proposed rules “unprecedented and wrong” and added that they would “destroy” innovation and economic growth around the world.
These proposals are intended to build off of guidance the Biden administration released in October 2022 and October 2023. Today’s proposal also includes a 120-day comment period, but the rules will go into effect before that period ends, according to CNN.
While this news is causing some stir in the AI community, with a new administration taking office next week, the conversation around chip export restrictions could look completely different by the end of the month.
