Comment by energy123

Comment by energy123 a day ago

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  "First, it assumes that scaling models automatically leads to something dangerous"
The regulation doesn't exactly make this assumption. Not only are large models stifled, the ability to serve models via API to many users, and the ability to have many researchers working in parallel on upgrading the model is also stifled. It wholesale stifles AI progress for the targeted nations.

This is an appropriate restriction on what will likely be a core part of military technology in the coming decade (eg drone piloting).

Look, if Russia didn't invade Ukraine and China didn't keep saying they wanted to invade Taiwan, I wouldn't have any issues with sending them millions of Blackwell chips. But that's not the world we live in. Unfortunately, this is the foreign policy reality that exists outside of the tech bubble we live in. If China ever wants to drop their ambitions over Taiwan then the export restrictions should be dropped, but not a moment sooner.

babkayaga a day ago

right. China. but Switzerland? Israel? what is going on here?

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  • thatcat a day ago

    Israel is a known industrial espionage threat to the us, how'd you think they got nuclear weapons? some analysts say they're the largest threat after china. Not to mention theyre currently using ai in targeting systems while under investigation for war crimes.

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    • ben_w 19 hours ago

      > how'd you think they got nuclear weapons?

      I rather assumed they were able to re-invent them from scratch by the work of their own scientists. I mean, the US did it before the invention of the transistor and what I've heard about the USSR project is their espionage only helped them know the critical mass without needing so many test runs, so it doesn't seem like it would be implausible that Israel could do it themselves about 20 years later.

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      • thatcat 18 hours ago

        Whether it is plausible or not is unrelated to what happened.

        In 1965 NUMEC owner, Zalman Shapiro - in coordination with israeli intelligence, diverted 100 kg of 95% enriched uranium from the facility and shipped it to Israel. Enriching the material to weapons grade is the technically difficult part - which I would think israel would certainly not have the budget for given the size of its economy.

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        • ben_w 16 hours ago

          Thanks for the specifics.

          > which I would think israel would certainly not have the budget for given the size of its economy.

          Hmm.

          I'll buy that. I've seen a lot of wildly different cost estimates for separation work units, so I can only guess how much it might have cost at the time.

          If it would have otherwise been the full Manhattan Project, I don't even need to guess, you're definitely correct they couldn't have afforded it: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=gdp+israel+1965

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  • jagrsw a day ago

    It could be related to 14eyes with modifications (finland and ireland, plus close asian allies).

    https://res.cloudinary.com/dbulfrlrz/images/w_1024,h_661,c_s... (from https://protonvpn.com/blog/5-eyes-global-surveillance).

    Israel, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland are also missing from it

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    • gunian 21 hours ago

      As someone who is in the verge of being killed with no side in this entire reality it's cool that in addition to trade and economics we now get compute as a geopolitical indicator maybe it can really all be automated

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  • energy123 a day ago

    > Switzerland? Israel?

    I hope someone with a better understanding of the details can jump in, but they are both Tier 2 (not Tier 3) restricted, so maybe there are some available loopholes or Presidential override authority or something. Also I believe they can still access uncapped compute if they go via data centers built in the US.

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logicchains a day ago

Limiting US GPU exports to unaligned countries is completely counterproductive as it creates a market in those countries for Chinese GPUs, accelerating their development even faster. Because a mediocre Huawei GPU is better than no GPU. And it harms the revenue of US-aligned GPU companies, slowing their development.

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