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WH Executive Order Affecting Chips and AI Models
- nickpsecurity 2y agoSingapore’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.
- logicchains 2y agoThe linked executive order restricts exports of large numbers of GPUs to Singapore, which might make training models there hard, at least until Chinese GPU technology catches up enough.
- nickpsecurity 2y agoThere’s companies hosting GPU’s in Singapore. There’s also probably places without export restrictions to Singapore that have GPU’s to sell them. They might also buy them in smaller quantities from many suppliers online. Finally, they could try distributed training on the various, low-cost clouds. A higher-risk option would be to build or buy FPGA accelerators. They’ve had lots of FPGA’s over there. They might be able to do A.I. on them. It would also be easier for their engineers to port published designs to FPGA’s than to make ASIC’s. Then, maybe make their own FPGA like some academic teams did.
- jonbraun 2y ago> 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…
- treyd 2y agoI think it's interesting that they're actually using the term "open-weight" here instead of what AI corps would want you to use which would be "open-source", trying to conflate sources and weights. Perhaps a good sign, for a week.
- anonu 2y ago> 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?
- brookst 2y agoI didn’t read it that way. I read it as trying to control what can be controlled; risk mitigation rather than risk elimination.
- logicchains 2y ago>So the rule pre-supposes that close-weight models will just always be better than their open-weight counterparts It doesn't necessarily presuppose that. Trying to limit the export of open weight models would likely fail on first amendment grounds, the same way the supreme court struck down attempts to limit the export of "military grade" cryptography.
- kcb 2y agoNvidia responds with a Trump endorsement: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-policy/
- asddubs 2y ago>As the First Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach. that's kind of a strange thing to say
- Xunjin 2y agoMaybe they are playing the card of "Trump is with us" and will undo it?
- bayarearefugee 2y ago> that's kind of a strange thing to say Not when your goal is to publicly fellate Donald Trump.
- asddubs 2y agoyes, but even so it's a choice to essentially say "we need a president who doesn't want to build walls, like donald trump". But obviously even in a less literal reading this is on its face just not true based on his presidency, whether you think that's a good thing or not.
- klooney 2y ago> 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.
- lazide 2y agoI don’t know what you’re talking about officer! I always ship just 1,699 GPUs, otherwise the box gets too full!
- franktankbank 2y agoOfficer leans over and finds another gpu right underneath the bumper... got em.
- Simon_O_Rourke 2y agoWho are the 18 key allies that can get our chips?
- sct202 2y agoThe 18 countries with no restrictions are: UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. https://www.wired.com/story/new-us-rule-aims-to-block-chinas-access-to-ai-chips-and-models-by-restricting-the-world/ https://www.wired.com/story/new-us-rule-aims-to-block-chinas... Singapore and Israel are notably absent.
- alephnerd 2y agoIsrael probably due to NPT violations (same with India) and probably Singapore due to existing compliance issues with export controlled products being exported to China or Russia (same with UAE and India).
- devsda 2y ago> NPT violations (same with India) Just a small correction. India is not a signatory to NPT. There's no violation.
- alephnerd 2y agoThat's the violation. Same reason Israel isn't included despite being a major NATO+ member. Just because you aren't a party to an agreement doesn't mean you aren't in violation of it.
- lupire 2y agoThey are not in compliance with the provisions. They aren't violating anything. They can't violate a promise they haven't made.
- logicchains 2y agoThis 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.
- dist-epoch 2y agoChina will impose similar regulations and export restrictions.
- kcb 2y agoMaybe, on the US and our 18 friends. Meaning we've accomplished nothing besides giving the rest of the world to China.
- paulvnickerson 2y agoWhich will apply for exactly one week.
- Over2Chars 2y agoIt seems like Trump would only go harder on this kind of thing "as a negotiating tactic" or something. He seems unlikely to make it easier for China, at least without something in return.
- suraci 2y agoQuite the opposite The US' usual pressure tactic is to create a bluff, first raise sanctions, and use this as a bargaining chip in negotiations to gain benefits. If you observe closely enough, you will find that every time before the U.S. government negotiates with the Chinese government, it announces new sanctions or other pressure tactics. Biden, however, played the card that Trump was going to play prematurely. Trump can not go 'harder', because Biden has compressed Trump's tactical space. So, when Trump enters the White House, he will find that he has few cards left to play - Chips, Oil, Ukrain War, interest rates, debt and deficit , etc Instead, there'll be mines left for him by Biden admin.
- lantry 2y agoI'm glad to see we're already rationalizing Trump's poor performance, before he even starts.
- suraci 2y ago... I'm a Chinese living in China. I don't have to select and defend one of those two presidents like Americans.
- Over2Chars 2y agoIt appears that Chinese merchants don't seem to be as confident that Trump won't do anything: https://www.newsweek.com/trade-surplus-china-economy-exports-trump-tariff-threats-2013800 https://www.newsweek.com/trade-surplus-china-economy-exports... Apparently Trump can't do this because Biden cut off his options..? https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/trump-unleash-nearly-40-tariffs-china-early-2025-hitting-growth-2024-11-20/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/trump-unleash-nearly-40... Trump can't cancel MFN because Biden already cancelled MFN? https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/04/trump-pntr-status-china-permanent-normal-trade-relations-tarriffs-revoke-congress/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/04/trump-pntr-status-china... I think you're taking Trump too lightly.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Nvidia Statement on the Biden Administration's Misguided 'AI Diffusion' Rule https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682773
- heyflyguy 2y agoAre 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?
- bayindirh 2y ago> but we are ok with Llama3.3? Considering Meta's view about the new president, the new Llama might become closed source at any moment now.
- kcb 2y agoIn seriousness, this make Meta's decision to push open weight models incredibly valuable. Now there's no restrictions on their geographic use or "Security Standards" unlike their competitors.
- bayindirh 2y agoYes. I'm also a big supporter of open-weight models. Hope they don't touch it and continue down that path. I actually prefer "reproducible" models with their code and training data attached, but we don't live in that world, yet.
- gosub100 2y agoYou and I have to compete in this "competitive" job market thanks to AI, but we can't have US megacorps compete with China who might develop better tools used to swindle us.
- agilob 2y ago>Are we trying to slow global competition with bad actors by restricting their ability to run compute on these. Huawei GPUs
- rcarmo 2y agoI'm reminded of oil regulations, and the days when munitions laws meant encryption couldn't be exported. Won't last long.
- 98347587575757 2y agoIs 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.
- ColdTakes 2y agoGPU smuggling to China has already happened. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/underground-network-smuggles-nvidia-gpus-into-china-despite-us-sanctions-some-smugglers-even-sell-entire-servers https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
- tmaly 2y agoThis reminds me of the restrictions they had around encryption. It seems like it may hurt open source efforts.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoRelated: Oracle: Export Control Diffusion Confusion https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/export-control-diffusion-confusion-2025-01-05/ https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/export-control... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42690300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42690300)
- gnabgib 2y agoNote Oracle's statement is already a week old (Jan 5th), it's not in response to this Whitehouse order. Expect we'll see a new statement from them soon.