The Biden administration issued sweeping rules on Monday governing how AI chips and designs can be shared with foreign countries, in an effort to create a global framework that will guide how artificial intelligence is deployed around the world in the years ahead. .
With the power of artificial intelligence growing rapidly, the Biden administration said the rules were needed to keep a transformative technology under the control of the United States and its allies, and out of the hands of adversaries who could use it to augment the U.S. military. their, cyberattacks and otherwise threaten the United States.
Technology companies have protested the new rules, saying they threaten their sales and the future prospects of the US technology industry.
The rules set different limits on the number of AI chips companies can ship to different countries, essentially dividing the world into three categories. The United States and 18 of its closest partners – including Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan – are exempt from any restrictions and can freely buy AI chips.
Countries already subject to US arms embargoes, such as China and Russia, will continue to face a pre-existing ban on AI chip purchases.
All other nations — most of the world — will be subject to restrictions limiting the number of artificial intelligence chips that can be imported, although countries and companies are able to increase that number by entering into special agreements with the US government. The rules could put some foreign governments at risk: even countries that are close trading partners or military allies of the United States, such as Mexico, Switzerland, Poland or Israel, would face restrictions on their ability to buy larger quantities of American AI products.
The rules are intended to stop China from receiving from other countries the technology it needs to produce artificial intelligence, after the United States banned such sales to China in recent years.
But the regulations also have broader goals: to make allied countries the location of choice for companies to build the world’s largest data centers, in an effort to keep the most advanced AI designs within the borders of the United States and its partners.
Governments around the world, especially in the Middle East, have pumped money into attracting and building huge data centers in a bid to become the next hub for AI development.
Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters Sunday that the rule would ensure that the infrastructure for training the most advanced artificial intelligence would be in the United States or in the jurisdiction of close allies, and “that capacity does not it will depreciate like chips and batteries and other industries that we had to invest hundreds of billions of dollars to bring back to earth.”
Mr. Sullivan said the rule would provide “greater clarity for our international partners and for industry” while countering national security threats from malicious actors who could use “American technologies against us.”
It will be up to the Trump administration to decide whether to keep the new rules or how to implement them. In a call with reporters Sunday, Biden administration officials said the rules had bipartisan support and that they had been in consultation with the incoming administration about them.
Although companies in China have begun to develop their own AI chips, the global market for such semiconductors is dominated by American companies, particularly Nvidia. This dominance has given the US government the ability to regulate the flow of AI technology around the world, limiting the exports of US companies.
Companies have protested the restrictions, saying the restrictions could deter harmless or even useful types of computing, anger U.S. allies and ultimately push global buyers to buy non-U.S.-made products such as from China.
In a statement, Ned Finkle, Nvidia’s vice president of government affairs, called the rule “unprecedented and wrong” and said it “threatens to disrupt innovation and economic growth around the world.”
“Instead of mitigating any threat, Biden’s new rules would only weaken America’s global competitiveness, undermining the innovation that has kept the US ahead,” he said. Shares of Nvidia fell more than 2 percent on Monday morning.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in a statement that the company was confident it could “fully comply with the high security standards of this rule and meet the technology needs of the countries and customers around the world who rely on us.”
In a letter to congressional leadership Sunday seen by The New York Times, Jason Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a group that represents technology companies, urged Congress to step in and use its authority. to reverse the action if the Trump Administration did not.
John Neuffer, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said his group was “deeply disappointed that a policy change of this magnitude and impact is being pushed out the door days before a presidential transition and without any meaningful input from the industry.”
“The stakes are high and the timing is tough,” added Mr. Neuffer.
The rules, which run more than 200 pages, also create a system in which companies that operate data centers, such as Microsoft and Google, can apply for special government accreditation.
In exchange for following certain safety standards, these companies can more freely market AI chips around the globe. Companies will have to agree to keep 75 percent of their total AI computing power within the United States or allied countries and deploy no more than 7 percent of their computing power in any other country.
The rules also put the first controls on the weights for AI models, parameters unique to each model that determine how the AI makes its predictions. Companies that set up data centers abroad will be required to adopt security standards to protect this intellectual property and prevent adversaries from gaining access to it.
Governments facing restrictions can increase the number of AI chips they can freely import by signing agreements with the US government in which they agree to comply with US AI protection goals.
At the behest of the US government, Microsoft reached a partnership deal with an Emirati firm, G42, last year in exchange for G42 eliminating Huawei devices from its systems and taking other steps.
The Biden administration may issue more regulations related to chips and AI in the coming days, including an executive order to encourage domestic power generation for data centers, and new rules aimed at keeping chips more recently outside China, people familiar with said discussions.
The latest rule comes in response to an incident last year in which US officials found that Huawei, the sanctioned Chinese telecom firm, had received components for its artificial intelligence chips that were manufactured by a leading Taiwanese chip firm, in violation of US export controls.
The announcements are among a slew of new regulations the Biden administration is rushing to roll out ahead of the presidential cycle as it tries to close loopholes and cement its legacy in opposing China’s technological development. The administration has issued new restrictions on exports of chip-making equipment to China and other countries, proposed new restrictions on Chinese drones, added new Chinese companies to a military blacklist and rushed to finalize new subsidies for chip manufacturing in the USA.
But the AI regulations released Monday appear to be among the most comprehensive and consequential of these actions. Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the way scientists conduct research, how companies divide tasks among their employees, and how armies operate. While AI has many useful uses, US officials have grown increasingly concerned that it could enable the development of new weapons, help countries monitor dissidents and otherwise upend the global balance of power.
Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis at the RAND Corporation, said the rules would create a framework for protecting US security interests while allowing firms to compete abroad. “They are also forward-looking, trying to preserve supply chains led by the US and allies before moving to the highest subsidy bidder,” he said.
