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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

#31

Post by Fnoord »

tlb wrote: post #14
kragen wrote: post #4

Bernstein's case established that he had a First Amendment right to publish source code under the law in effect at the time; he argued, successfully, that this was the form in which his research was communicated to other researchers. He won his case, but it took many years, and of course court cases are political processes; they may be decided differently when different judges have been appointed to the bench. It see…

The ethical argument for why everyone should have access to cryptography is a lot stronger than why everyone should have access to satellite imagery recognition algorithms. Also, cryptography requires both sides to use the same algorithm, while companies don't need to use the same recognition algorithms. It also helped, in the crypto case, that you could print some version of it on a T-shirt or mail it on a postcard.…

Can one exfiltrate these neural net parameters via the Internet or via Tor?

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

#32

Post by tomc1985 »

naniwaduni wrote: post #21
Animats wrote: 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.

I doubt the US is ahead in this area. China gains heaps upon heaps or practical experience in CV by sheer virtue of the breadth of its surveillance networks. Not to say we aren't doing the same here in the US, but efforts seem to be much more scattered

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

#33

Post by kragen »

tlb wrote: post #14
kragen wrote: post #4

Bernstein's case established that he had a First Amendment right to publish source code under the law in effect at the time; he argued, successfully, that this was the form in which his research was communicated to other researchers. He won his case, but it took many years, and of course court cases are political processes; they may be decided differently when different judges have been appointed to the bench. It see…

The ethical argument for why everyone should have access to cryptography is a lot stronger than why everyone should have access to satellite imagery recognition algorithms. Also, cryptography requires both sides to use the same algorithm, while companies don't need to use the same recognition algorithms. It also helped, in the crypto case, that you could print some version of it on a T-shirt or mail it on a postcard.…

Lawyers have made strong cases on both sides of the cryptography argument; probably they can on both sides of the satellite-imagery argument as well. Maps are the primary result of satellite imagery recognition and are a public good. Most covert activity visible on satellite imagery is environmental damage, which is often illegal and generally harms the public. Satellite image processing can be very useful for increasing agricultural production; restricting that to one country, or granting one country's companies an effective worldwide monopoly on increasing agricultural production, would be ethically unconscionable — in times of drought, it amounts to letting people starve instead of telling them how to raise adequate food.

But Bernstein's case didn't hinge on the likely consequences of strong cryptography being widely available; rather, he argued that he had a First Amendment right to publish his research.

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

#35

Post by astura »

Buttons840 wrote: post #29
reubenmorais wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

An Intel subsidiary was fined for exporting encryption between 2008 and 2011 without permission.

https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/all-articles/107-about-bis...

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

#36

Post by astatine »

Unlike the space race, where Russia and the US were significantly ahead of everyone else, the field is far more level in AI. Arguably there will be areas where the US could even be behind in some areas.

Wonder what the real world impact of this will be. Not much, I expect.

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

#37

Post by lopmotr »

withinrafael wrote: post #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 geo…

It seems strangely ambiguous:

"(geospatial imagery) and (point clouds)" or "geospatial (imagery and point clouds)"?

Point 4 requires the use of geospatial imagery, so any point-cloud-only product would be exempt, it seems?

The document doesn't define "geospatial imagery", but that could surely include hobby and commercial drone footage of the ground. Perhaps even ordinary photography from security cameras that have user-define object identification features? That would make it really quite broad.

But all we need to do is not normalize color, and then everything's exempt!

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

#38

Post by hyustan »

Sounds like something straight out of Terminator movies. I think they are afraid this technology will get out of hand in the near future and I can't really blame them. I remember that video with the Google Assistant making a hair dresser appointment. Pretty scary stuff

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

#39

Post by _iyig »

astatine wrote: post #36

Unlike the space race, where Russia and the US were significantly ahead of everyone else, the field is far more level in AI. Arguably there will be areas where the US could even be behind in some areas. Wonder what the real world impact of this will be. Not much, I expect.

>Wonder what the real world impact of this will be. Not much, I expect.

Here's a thought experiment I use to imagine the impact of AI:

Imagine you've got a million people at your disposal. At zero cost and with no downtime, these people can remotely operate robots, understand text, interact using natural language, or classify objects in images, all with human-level intelligence and accuracy. Now what?

Obviously there are areas where AI can outperform humans, like mechanical accuracy and mathematical computation. But in general, I find this experiment works pretty well.

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