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U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#21
post #3

This assumes the US is ahead of China in image recognition. Is there any justification for that?

It is meaningful if the US is ahead of any cooperating bloc of powers in any covered area of image recognition. This is much broader than being ahead of specifically China on the whole. For it to not be true would essentially imply that no new research is happening in the US.

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#22

Considering that AI is whatever marketing folks want it to be, it'd be interesting see their legal definition AI. Anyone have a link to the actual document?

I think it's this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g... Page 4 and 9 have the technical definitions. My off the cuff interpretation is that the rule would only cover convolutional neural nets that are trained to identify and determine the orientation of specific objects in geospatial imagery. If the neural net's input/output aren't wrapped in a GUI it sounds like they still might be OK to e…

My reading is that it's the GUI used to train a neural network to identify any objects in geospatial imagery. I'm definitely less okay with that. Although, I feel like the GUI is not the hard part to make, so it's a weird part to restrict.

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#24

Considering that AI is whatever marketing folks want it to be, it'd be interesting see their legal definition AI. Anyone have a link to the actual document?

I think it's this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g... Page 4 and 9 have the technical definitions. My off the cuff interpretation is that the rule would only cover convolutional neural nets that are trained to identify and determine the orientation of specific objects in geospatial imagery. If the neural net's input/output aren't wrapped in a GUI it sounds like they still might be OK to e…

1. Provides a graphical user interface that enables the user to identify objects (e.g., vehicles, houses, etc.) from within geospatial imagery and point clouds in order to extract positive and negative samplesof an object of interest;

2.Reduces pixel variation by performing scale, color, and rotational normalization on the positive samples;

3. Trains a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to detect the object of interest from the positive and negative samples; and

4. Identifies objects in geospatial imagery using the trained Deep Convolutional Neural Network by matching the rotational pattern from the positive samples with the rotational pattern of objects in the geospatial imagery.

What counts as "geospatial imagery"? Could this apply to any training UI for self-driving cars, maps, street view, etc.?

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#25
Additional details are present in the unpublished rule (document 2019-27649 [1][2]).

-- cut --

Geospatial imagery “software” “specially designed” for training a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to automate the analysis of geospatial imagery and point clouds, and having all of the following:

1. Provides a graphical user interface that enables the user to identify objects (e.g., vehicles, houses, etc.) from within geospatial imagery and point clouds in order to extract positive and negative samples of an object of interest;

2. Reduces pixel variation by performing scale, color, and rotational normalization on the positive samples;

3. Trains a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to detect the object of interest from the positive and negative samples; and

4. Identifies objects in geospatial imagery using the trained Deep Convolutional Neural Network by matching the rotational pattern from the positive samples with the rotational pattern of objects in the geospatial imagery.

Technical Note: A point cloud is a collection of data points defined by a given coordinate system. A point cloud is also known as a digital surface model.

-- cut --

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/06/2019-27...

[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g...

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.g... Page 4 and 9 have the technical definitions. My off the cuff interpretation is that the rule would only cover convolutional neural nets that are trained to identify and determine the orientation of specific objects in geospatial imagery. If the neural net's input/output aren't wrapped in a GUI it sounds like they still might be OK to e…

1. Provides a graphical user interface that enables the user to identify objects (e.g., vehicles, houses, etc.) from within geospatial imagery and point clouds in order to extract positive and negative samplesof an object of interest; 2.Reduces pixel variation by performing scale, color, and rotational normalization on the positive samples; 3. Trains a Deep Convolutional Neural Network to detect the object of interes…

Probably anything taken from a satellite or aircraft

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#27
I used to put on my tinfoil hat and imagine that cryptography was the field to study if you wanted secret government agents to visit you. Maybe next time I will instead imagine that computer vision is what summons the secret agents.

More seriously, computer vision is going to be important and it appears to be far less known than machine learning and has higher barriers to entry. I'd exchange a few introductory machine learning books for more good computer vision introductions.

Any suggestions on how to get started with computer vision?

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#28
post #16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada counts as the US for several national security purposes. There's a lot of cooperation to prevent this type of loophole.

Can you point to some of that cooperation or legislation regarding it, that sounds quite interesting.

My guess it's related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#29

Prior to this "rule", was it possible to break the law and get in trouble for doing nothing more than publishing source code to the world? Has that now changed? Is publishing personal code on GitHub "exporting"?

In the US, at some point cryptography code was considered "munitions" and you needed permission to export it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States

Definitely worth mentioning, thank you. However, I was aware of that and believe there are currently no cryptography related restrictions (right?), so I'm still wondering if this is a zero-to-one situation. Has the software export restriction been switched from off to on?

Re: U.S. government limits exports of artificial intelligence software

#30
post #16
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada counts as the US for several national security purposes. There's a lot of cooperation to prevent this type of loophole.

Can you point to some of that cooperation or legislation regarding it, that sounds quite interesting.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/126.5
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