President Trump’s administration plans to rescind and modify a Biden-era rule that curbed on the export of sophisticated artificial intelligence chips, a spokeswoman for the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
The regulation was aimed toward further restricting AI chip and technology exports, dividing up the world to maintain advanced computing power in the US and amongst its allies while finding more ways to dam China’s access.
The Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion was issued in January, every week before the tip of the administration of former President Joe Biden. It capped a four-year effort by the Biden administration to hobble China’s access to advanced chips that would enhance its military capabilities and to keep up US leadership in AI.
“The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation,” the Commerce spokeswoman said. “We shall be replacing it with a much simpler rule that unleashes American innovation and ensures American AI dominance.”
Last week, Reuters reported that the Trump administration was working on changes to the rule that will limit global access to AI chips, including possibly removing its splitting the world into tiers that help determine what number of advanced semiconductors a rustic can obtain.
In line with the Commerce spokeswoman, officials “didn’t just like the tiered system” and said the rule was “unenforceable.” The spokeswoman didn’t have a timetable for the brand new rule. She said debate was still under way on one of the best plan of action. The Biden rule was set to take effect on May 15.
Shares of Nvidia, an AI chip designer whose sales could rise if the rule were modified to extend exports, ended 3% higher after the news got here out on Wednesday, but then dipped 0.7% in after-hours trade.
The Biden rule divided the world into three tiers: 17 countries and Taiwan were in the primary tier, which could receive unlimited chips. Some 120 other countries were within the second tier, which was subject to caps on the variety of chips the countries could receive. Within the third tier, countries of concern including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea were blocked from the chips.
But Trump administration officials are weighing discarding the tiered approach to access within the rule and replacing it with a worldwide licensing regime with government-to-government agreements, sources told Reuters last week.
