[News] U.S. Department of Commerce Introduces New Regulations to Restrict China from Training AI Using U.S. Cloud Services

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U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo stated on January 26th that the U.S. government will propose that American cloud computing companies determine whether foreign entities are accessing U.S. data centers to train artificial intelligence models.

The proposed “know your customer” regulation was made available for public inspection on January 26th and is scheduled for publication on January 29th.

According to a report from Reuters, Raimondo stated during her interview that, “We can’t have non-state actors or China or folks who we don’t want accessing our cloud to train their models.”

“We use export controls on chips,” she noted. “Those chips are in American cloud data centers so we also have to think about closing down that avenue for potential malicious activity.”

Raimondo further claimed that, the United States is “trying as hard as we can to deny China the compute power that they want to train their own (AI) models, but what good is that if they go around that to use our cloud to train their models?”

Since the U.S. government introduced chip export controls to China last year, NVIDIA initially designed downgraded AI chips A800 and H800 for Chinese companies. However, new regulations in October of 2023 by the U.S. Department of Commerce brought A800, H800, L40S, and other chips under control.

Raimondo stated that the Commerce Department would not permit NVIDIA to export its most advanced and powerful AI chips, which could facilitate China in developing cutting-edge models.

In addition to the limitations on NVIDIA’s AI chips, the U.S. government has also imposed further restrictions on specific equipment. For example, ASML, a leading provider of semiconductor advanced lithography equipment, announced on January 1st, 2024, that it was partially revoking export licenses for its DUV equipment in relation to the U.S. government.

Read more

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