January 13th, 2025

WH Executive Order Affecting Chips and AI Models

The Biden-Harris Administration has introduced measures to enhance U.S. AI leadership, streamline chip licensing, promote collaboration with allies, and restrict access for adversarial nations to advanced AI technologies.

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WH Executive Order Affecting Chips and AI Models

The Biden-Harris Administration has released a fact sheet outlining measures to enhance U.S. security and economic strength in the context of artificial intelligence (AI). Recognizing the growing importance of AI, the administration emphasizes the need for the U.S. to lead in AI technology to prevent adversaries from exploiting it for harmful purposes, such as developing weapons or conducting mass surveillance. The new Interim Final Rule on Artificial Intelligence Diffusion aims to streamline licensing for chip orders, thereby bolstering U.S. AI leadership and providing clarity for allied nations. Key provisions include allowing chip sales to 18 allies without restrictions, enabling significant computational power purchases without licenses for many institutions, and establishing trusted user statuses for entities in allied countries. The rule also imposes restrictions on countries of concern to limit their access to advanced AI systems and computing power. These actions build on previous regulations and reflect extensive consultations with stakeholders and international partners. The administration's approach seeks to ensure that U.S. technology remains at the forefront of global AI development while safeguarding national security.

- The U.S. aims to lead in AI technology to prevent adversaries from exploiting it.

- New rules streamline licensing for chip orders to enhance U.S. AI leadership.

- Chip sales to 18 key allies are unrestricted, promoting collaboration.

- Trusted user statuses allow significant computational power purchases for allied entities.

- Restrictions are placed on countries of concern to limit their access to advanced AI systems.

Link Icon 14 comments
By @klooney - 3 months
> Chip orders with collective computation power up to roughly 1,700 advanced GPUs do not require a license

Structuring, but for gpus. Seems like the sort of loophole you could drive a truck through.

By @jonbraun - 3 months
> Restricting the transfer to non-trusted actors of the model weights for advanced closed-weight models. The rule does not in any way inhibit the publication of model weights for open-weight models.

> Setting security standards to protect the weights of advanced closed-weight AI models, permitting them to be stored and used securely around the world while helping prevent illicit adversary access.

Controlling the weights is becoming critical for the US…

By @ChrisArchitect - 3 months
By @nickpsecurity - 3 months
Singapore’s Copyright Act already had the best Text and Data Mining exception. If scraped yourself, anything on the Internet is probably legal to train with.

Now, both Europe and the U.S. are trying to regulate both training and distribution of A.I. models. That might make Singapore an even better place for training A.I. models. The only question is if they have any regulations on training or distribution outside of the Copyright Act.

By @heyflyguy - 3 months
Are we trying to slow global competition with bad actors by restricting their ability to run compute on these.

And then we don't want GPT4o closed models going over the fence, but we are ok with Llama3.3?

I am I reading this correctly?

By @paulvnickerson - 3 months
Which will apply for exactly one week.
By @kcb - 3 months
Nvidia responds with a Trump endorsement: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/
By @logicchains - 3 months
This is great news for Huawei: people outside China will finally have a reason to buy their GPUs, because a mediocre GPU is better than no GPU.
By @rcarmo - 3 months
I'm reminded of oil regulations, and the days when munitions laws meant encryption couldn't be exported. Won't last long.
By @tmaly - 3 months
This reminds me of the restrictions they had around encryption.

It seems like it may hurt open source efforts.

By @98347587575757 - 3 months
Is there a Viktor Bout of GPU smuggling? Has any journalist written about it? Whenever I see discussions of GPU restrictions I just think about what would happen if I boarded a US to China flight with a stack of H100s in my carry-on.
By @anonu - 3 months
> Restricting the transfer to non-trusted actors of the model weights for advanced closed-weight models. The rule does not in any way inhibit the publication of model weights for open-weight models.

So the rule pre-supposes that close-weight models will just always be better than their open-weight counterparts. How do they know this will hold up?

By @Simon_O_Rourke - 3 months
Who are the 18 key allies that can get our chips?
By @ChrisArchitect - 3 months
Related:

Nvidia Statement on the Biden Administration's Misguided 'AI Diffusion' Rule

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682773