The Biden administration is proposing requiring U.S. cloud companies to determine whether foreign entities are accessing U.S. data centers to train AI models, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Friday.
"We can't have non-state actors or China or folks who
we don’t want accessing our cloud to train their models," Raimondo said in
an interview with Reuters. "We use export controls on chips," she
noted. "Those chips are in American cloud data centers so we also have to
think about closing down that avenue for potential malicious activity."
The Biden administration is taking a series of measures to
prevent China from using U.S. technology for artificial intelligence, as the
burgeoning sector raises security concerns.
The proposed "know your customer" regulation was
released on Friday for public inspection and will be published on Monday.
"It is a big deal," Raimondo said.
The United States is "trying as hard as we can to deny
China the compute power that they want to train their own (AI) models, but what
good is that if they go around that to use our cloud to train their
models?" she said.
Last month, Raimondo said Commerce would not allow Nvidia
(NVDA.O), opens new tab "to ship is the most sophisticated,
highest-processing-power AI chips, which would enable China to train their
frontier models."
The U.S. government is worried about China developing
advanced AI systems on a variety of national security grounds and has taken
steps to stop Beijing from receiving cutting-edge U.S. technologies to
strengthen its military.
The proposal would require U.S. cloud computing companies to
verify the identity of foreign persons who sign up for or maintain accounts
that utilize U.S. cloud computing through a "know-your-customer program or
Customer Identification Program." It would also set minimum standards for
identifying foreign users and would require cloud computing firms to certify
compliance annually.
Raimondo said U.S. cloud computing companies "should
have the burden of knowing who their biggest customers are training the biggest
models, and we're trying to get that information. What will we do with that
information? It depends on what we find."
President Joe Biden in October signed an executive order
requiring developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security,
the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with
the U.S. government before they are released to the public.
The Commerce Department plans to soon send those survey
requests to companies. Raimondo told Reuters companies will have 30 days to
respond. "Any company that doesn't want to comply is a red flag for
me," she said.
Carl Szabo, general counsel at NetChoice, a tech industry
trade group, said Commerce is implementing Biden's "illegal"
executive order "to force industry reporting requirements for AI." He
added that requiring U.S. cloud companies to report use of their resources by
non-U.S. entities "for training large language models could deter
international collaboration."
Top cloud providers include Amazon.com's (AMZN.O), opens new
tab AWS, Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google Cloud and Microsoft's
(MSFT.O), opens new tab Azure unit.
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