The US Department of Commerce has issued guidance by stating that the use of Huawei Artificial Intelligence chips “anywhere in the world” violates government export controls, intensifying US efforts to contain technological advances in China.
The agency’s office of industry and security stated in a statement on Tuesday that it also plans to alert the public about “the potential consequences of allowing US AI chips to be used for training and inference of Chinese Ia models.” Ia models training involves bombing them with data to teach them how to recognize standards. Inference, in turn, is the phase when models use this training to perform tasks.
The orientation of the Trade Department makes it even harder for Huawei, based in Shenzhen, to fulfill its ambitions to develop more powerful AI and smartphones chips, efforts that have already faced major obstacles due to US sanctions.
Huawei was projecting its next two Ascend processors – China’s response to Nvidia’s dominant accelerators – based on the same 7 nanometers that has been common for years, as reported by Bloomberg in November. US -led restrictions have already prevented Huawei chip manufacturing partners from purchasing state -of -the -art systems.
The office presented the new instructions while announced more broadly the revocation of Biden government regulations on the export of semiconductors used in AI development. These rules had generated blunt objections of allied and US companies, including Nvidia and Oracle.
Biden’s regulations “would have harmed US diplomatic relations with dozens of countries by relegating them to a second level status,” the trade department said on a statement on Tuesday, adding that he will publish a warning that formalizes the revocation of the rule and will issue a replacement “in the future”.
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The Trump government is elaborating its own approach and can change to negotiate individual agreements with countries, according to sources familiar with the subject. The Department of Commerce has stated in its statement that whatever comes from this will be “a bold and inclusive strategy for American AI technology with reliable foreign countries around the world, maintaining technology outside our opponents.”
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