Comment by simbleau

"The report says Gottumukkala requested a special exemption to access ChatGPT, which is blocked for other Department of Homeland Security staff."

ITAR, yes, but there's no such thing as a person or organization that's not EAR-regulated. Everything exported from the US that's not covered by ITAR (State Department) is covered by EAR (Department of Commerce), even if only EAR99.

Sure. That doesn't mean denying access to ChatGPT though - the way I see it, the entire value proposition of Microsoft offering OpenAI models through Azure is to enable access to ChatGPT under contractual terms that make it appropriate for use in government and enterprise organizations, including those dealing with sensitive technology work.

I mean, they are all using O365 to run their day-to-day businesses anyway.

I used to work in a large technology multinational - not "tech industry", but proper industrial technology; the kind of corp that does everything, from dishwashers to oil rigs. It took nearly a year from OpenAI releasing GPT-4 to us having some form of access to this model for general work (coding and otherwise) internally, and from what I understand[0], it's just how long it took for the company to evaluate risks and iron out appropriate contractual agreements with Microsoft wrt. using generative models hosted on Azure. But they did it, which proves to me it's entirely possible, even in places where people are more worried about accidentally falling afoul of technology exports control than insider training.

--

[0] - Purely observational, I had no access to any insider/sensitive information regarding this process.

I agree....but ITAR and EAR can be super vauge especially in higher education.

Its something I have been talking about. Going to be needed for everyone.