The Commerce Department is Considering National Security Restrictions on AI (nytimes.com) 72
An anonymous reader shares a report: A common belief among tech industry insiders is that Silicon Valley has dominated the internet because much of the worldwide network was designed and built by Americans. Now a growing number of those insiders are worried that proposed export restrictions could short-circuit the pre-eminence of American companies in the next big thing to hit their industry, artificial intelligence.
In November, the Commerce Department released a list of technologies, including artificial intelligence, that are under consideration for new export rules because of their importance to national security. Technology experts worry that blocking the export of A.I. to other countries, or tying it up in red tape, will help A.I. industries flourish in those nations -- China, in particular -- and compete with American companies.
"The number of cases where exports can be sufficiently controlled are very, very, very small, and the chance of making an error is quite large," said Jack Clark, head of policy at OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco. "If this goes wrong, it could do real damage to the A.I. community." The export controls are being considered as the United States and China engage in a trade war. The Trump administration has been critical of the way China negotiates deals with American companies, often requiring the transfer of technology to Chinese partners as the cost of doing business in the country. And federal officials are making an aggressive argument that China has stolen American technology through hacking and industrial espionage.
In November, the Commerce Department released a list of technologies, including artificial intelligence, that are under consideration for new export rules because of their importance to national security. Technology experts worry that blocking the export of A.I. to other countries, or tying it up in red tape, will help A.I. industries flourish in those nations -- China, in particular -- and compete with American companies.
"The number of cases where exports can be sufficiently controlled are very, very, very small, and the chance of making an error is quite large," said Jack Clark, head of policy at OpenAI, an artificial intelligence lab in San Francisco. "If this goes wrong, it could do real damage to the A.I. community." The export controls are being considered as the United States and China engage in a trade war. The Trump administration has been critical of the way China negotiates deals with American companies, often requiring the transfer of technology to Chinese partners as the cost of doing business in the country. And federal officials are making an aggressive argument that China has stolen American technology through hacking and industrial espionage.
Re: The bright side of this (Score:1)
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Like the great wise lady known as June Cleaver said...
Cut me some slack, Jack! Chump don' want no help, chump don't GET da help!
Export-grade cryptography v2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Export-grade cryptography v2.0 (Score:1, Insightful)
And why should US conpanies guve technology to any foreign company just because they say it is required to do a deal - there has to be a good reason - the E.U. does not play these stupid games, why would China be allowed to. At a minimum any transfer to a Chinese company of any asset would in my mind require audits up the yin yang along with process controls, ownership rights, and a full understanding of the control structures and conduct of an organization. I think there is plenty of tech and research in t
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Well, in the case of encryption, the NSA pushed to drop the export controls once it became clear that forcing Americans to use weak encryption whenever they might be dealing with foreigners is counter-productive to protecting Americans. When it was just the NSA who could crack DES, they were OK with forcing the rest of the world onto DES. Once other foreign powers acquired the capability, the NSA realized how stupid they were being.
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Well, in the case of encryption, the NSA pushed to drop the export controls once it became clear that forcing Americans to use weak encryption whenever they might be dealing with foreigners is counter-productive to protecting Americans. When it was just the NSA who could crack DES, they were OK with forcing the rest of the world onto DES. Once other foreign powers acquired the capability, the NSA realized how stupid they were being.
It was not the ability to crack encryption that the other countries developed (or, already had). It was the encryption capability itself. You cannot keep mathematics a secret - any county with any mathematicians was perfectly capable of creating much strong encrypion than what was banned by the U.S. And those capabilities and algorithms were open source in the rest of the world. Thus, the ban exporting these from the U.S. was meaningless.
Re:Export-grade cryptography v2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
This is another chapter in the saga of export-grade cryptography.
Bingo... The US will hobble itself in the name of national security and then China will get everything anyway because they have hacked and back doored US IT hardware, firmware and software.
We need to sort out our issues with China peacefully. I agree with playing hardball up to a point because we can't all just roll over and give up our Liberty and democracy as China takes over the world... but this isn't about allowing China access to US technology, they have everything they need already from hacking and disclosures, a bigger economy to fund additional R&D, and more people to throw at any problem.
This is about giving US companies the ability to collaborate with the rest of the world without registering their software as a weapon and without the threat of jailing researchers and software developers for just sharing software.
We should be dealing with China, not threatening US citizens because the US government can't get its shit together.
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Hint: (Score:1)
Our liberty and democracy were given up long before the slumbering dragon awakened. The Chinese have simply learned as an oligarchical capitalist cartel how to leverage money, influence, nationalism, and more questionable means to become the established monopoly across the world. Not unlike America has since its 'success' in WW2. And really one might say America post-WW2 was a welfare state supported by the rebuilding needs of the rest of the civilized world, leveraged into an unsustainable economy whose cu
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Korea, Tibet, Taiwan and Vietnam showed how "peaceful" a Communist Party feels towards the USA.
Communism likes to spread and spy. "Peacefully" is just a decade for their spies to operate better in.
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This is another chapter in the saga of export-grade cryptography.
Potentially, a more amusing one to watch though. If tech professionals can't agree what exactly AI is- I will find it amusing to watch politicians try.
Time to get a new t-shirt (Score:4, Funny)
I guess it's time to retire the t-shirt with the RSA formula and make a new one with
y = a[sum(wx+b)] on it.
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y = a[sum(wx+b)] on it.
. . . how about:
ROT13(ROT13(x)) = x for any basic Latin-alphabet text x.
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Their governments and nations buy/rent US products/services.
Their citizens steal US secrets.
Thats how US developed products and services get to "worldwide" AC.
The US gov and mil kept great advances confidential for decades.
Select the right staff, on merit and the US won't be spied on.
Don't export US tech that has a dual use/is mil only and its all good.
Only allow trusted 5 eye nations to use advanced US tech under US su
Giving it away is better? (Score:2)
Technology experts worry that blocking the export of A.I. to other countries, or tying it up in red tape, will help A.I. industries flourish in those nations -- China, in particular -- and compete with American companies.
So the NYT thinks exporting the technology to other countries after the US made the investment to develop it will stop the other countries - China in particular - from competing. I don't follow that argument.
The Internet (Score:2)
Do these tech industry insiders work for Reynholm Industries? Google, Apple and Facebook are not "the internet".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The Elders of the Internet would never stand for this nonsense.
Silly FUD (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think that China doesn't have other incentives to develop its own AI capabilities already, I have a bridge to sell you. The "embargo of AI = oh noes" is just FUD. And China's already getting pretty good on its own, e.g., https://www.inc.com/magazine/201809/amy-webb/china-artificial-intelligence.html
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I agree that the embargo makes absolutely no sense, but we're missing the point if we allow this to become a conversation about whether China has an incentive to develop AI. As you said, they unequivocally do. What this is actually about is whether or not other countries will be incentivized to work with China rather than the US.
I've never worked there, but I think it's safe to say that Silicon Valley (or, more broadly, the US as a whole) is more or less at the center of the current technological revolution
Those who don't know history (Score:4, Interesting)
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"
Anyone proposing this clearly does not recall the futile attempt to restrict cryptography.
You cannot ban the export of software; it's simply not possible. If you have a closed development shop, you may be able to keep trade secrets. But publicly known software developments? It's not possible. Software is basically applied mathematics: if the principles are know, anyone can implement them.
Of course, on /. I'm preaching to the choir...
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> You cannot ban the export of software; it's simply not possible.
Yes, it IS possible to ban software export.
Of course, in reality, such a ban will be worthless, but you can still ban it.
Just like murder; banned in almost all the world, but it still happens.
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"You cannot ban the export of software; it's simply not possible." Yes you can and is done ........ a lot.......... the department of defense has a boat load of software that it does not and will not export for any reason.
"Software is basically applied mathematics: if the principles are know, anyone can implement them." Easy solution. Don't make the principles publicly known. Again their are a myriad of instances where this has been done before.
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Of course when it comes to the current state of the art, the principles are already known. And we have a long way to go before its utility is fully found.
So all we'd doing is preventing US companies from having a share in the market and fostering more global competition. This would be a net loss to our economy.
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"And we have a long way to go before its utility is fully found." Not universally true.
"So all we'd doing is preventing US companies from having a share in the market and fostering more global competition." Not a reasonable assumption actually the exact opposite of what happens. If you prevent the export of fundamental knowledge you ensure that start nation's companies have 100% of the global market.
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How do you have the global market of you aren't exporting globally?
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The US gov and mil have done that for decades and information has never risked unexpected "export" due to the merit of the staff and good US security.
The US allowed its top academic to work in freedom around the USA on a lot of top secret projects for decades.
Merit to select the best staff, security to ensure they did not sell, spy, give away US secrets.
A great payment system to ensure they felt able to wor
Get out (Score:2)
Get out now. If you are considering development of commercial applications in the AI field*, move offshore. Or you will lose access to global markets.
*Whatever the hell that is.
Exercise in Futility (Score:3)
If you ban it, it will simply be stolen and exported to other countries anyway.
( I suspect we will be stealing it from other countries as well )
I know every country is in a race to see who can develop it first because, much like nuclear weapons, it gives the one who finishes
first a huge advantage over the rest.
The best course of action is to collaborate with other countries to help ensure AI actually turns into something useful for humanity.
By combining efforts, it may even shorten the time before we see the birth of a " true " AI.
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to help ensure AI actually turns into something useful for humanity.
Ahh, but much like "voting doesn't matter, being the one who COUNTS the votes does" adage, who defines exactly what "useful for humanity" is?
And even then, what if they change their mind later on, after learning from experience? Is the AI going to agree? What if Colossus (Movie: The Forbin Project) doesn't?
Lol...China is leading in AI research.... (Score:1)
...and have dedicated more resources to AI than the US has. We are behind.
Yeah, let's revist this (Score:2)
Sure. Let's revisit the fun and profit that was the encryption wars. It was fun to have an American version of IE that was different from the international version. And who didn't enjoy surreptitious release of crypto research in Europe to get around export controls? All that profit for software developers who get to do the same job twice was super beneficial.
So if as an American university researcher (Score:2)
(Or is this whole idea ludicrous?)
They are not sending their best (Score:2)
Whoever made this suggestion should not be allowed be anywhere near the position in which they can make such restrictions.
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2. Not when that research is done by the US gov/mil in secret. Good pay, good conditions and the staff have freedom.
3. US brands can export all the consumer product they want.
4. Select the best US staff who are loyal to the USA. On merit. Then secrets don't get sold/lost/given to other nations.
5. Lack of freedom holds back Communist nations.
6. Size and gov/mil support does not innovate under Communism like with the mil/gov
Never work... (Score:2)
It'll be a ridiculous joke we are laughed at for and that offers no benefits just like the encryption export restrictions.