The United States announced restrictions on AI software exports to China: effective tomorrow, drones and autonomous driving will be the first to be affected

Bian Ce Li Gen from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

2020 is here, has technology regulation improved?

Give up your fantasies.

According to the latest news from Reuters, the latest US export control measures have been launched: this time they are specifically aimed at the export of AI software, and specifically at China.

According to the content that has been exposed now, fields including drones and autonomous driving will be the first to be affected.

Restricting AI software exports to China

The Trump administration will take steps to restrict the export of artificial intelligence software in an effort to keep sensitive technology out of the control of rivals such as China, Reuters reported.

Under a new federal government rule, companies that export certain types of geospatial imagery software from the United States must apply for a license to send it to other countries, except Canada.

The regulation will come into effect next Monday (January 6).

This is the first measure taken by the U.S. Commerce Department under the authority of a 2018 law, which requires the department to develop written rules to strengthen oversight of exports of sensitive technologies to adversaries such as China and protect U.S. economic and security interests.

“They want to prevent American companies from helping China build better AI products to help its military,” said James Lewis, a technology expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

The rule would take effect only in the United States, but U.S. authorities could later take it to the countries that make up the Wassenaar Arrangement, in an attempt to get all 42 countries to regulate the export of such software.

Specific content of the ban

The regulation covers software that can be used by sensors, drones and satellites to automate the process of identifying targets for military and civilian purposes.

The new document adds software for automated analysis of geospatial imagery under export control classification code 0Y521. According to the US federal government document, this type of software refers to:

Geospatial imagery software specifically designed to train deep convolutional neural networks to automatically analyze geospatial imagery and point clouds , with the following capabilities:

1. Provide a graphical user interface (GUI) that enables users to identify objects (e.g., vehicles, houses, etc.) from geospatial images and point clouds in order to extract positive and negative samples of objects of interest;

2. Reduce pixel changes by performing scaling, color and rotation normalization operations on positive samples;

3. Train a deep convolutional neural network to detect target objects from positive and negative samples;

4. Use a trained deep convolutional neural network to recognize objects in geospatial imagery by matching the rotation patterns in positive samples with the rotation patterns of objects in geospatial imagery.

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

△ Point cloud in autonomous driving

The document also mentioned that the US government is currently planning to propose a multilateral system under the Wassenaar Arrangement to exercise multilateral control over these projects.

The so-called Wassenaar Arrangement is an agreement among 42 countries including the United States to control the export of traditional weapons and dual-use goods and technologies. It does not formally list the countries subject to control, but China is not among the signatories and will also be subject to control.

Drones and autonomous driving are at the forefront

According to the content of the document, this regulation will currently affect some companies that may use aerial maps and 3D maps, and companies such as drones and autonomous driving may be affected.

The regulations specifically emphasize GUI, which is a restriction on finished software . Frameworks that provide image processing, such as TensorFlow and PyTorch, may not be restricted, while platforms that directly provide map processing APIs on AWS and GCP will be affected.

Lewis also said the new U.S. rules might be welcomed by the industry, which had feared a broader crackdown on exports of most AI hardware and software.

But some Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. have been frustrated by the slow pace of implementation of the regulations, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urging the Commerce Department to speed up the process.

It is important to note that this is not the first time the United States has restricted technology exports, and it is unlikely to be the last.

In November 2018, the United States announced that it would impose export controls on cutting-edge technology fields such as AI, chips, robotics, quantum computing, brain-computer interfaces, and biotechnology - in response to China's rapid development in these fields.

Subsequently, restrictions on visas for Chinese technical talents and students traveling to the United States became increasingly stringent.

Since 2019, the United States has directly suppressed Chinese companies.

First, Huawei was added to the Entity List, and then export controls were imposed on five Chinese supercomputing companies including Sugon.

In October 2018, the U.S. Department of Commerce further added eight Chinese companies, including Hikvision, Dahua, iFlytek, Megvii, SenseTime, and Yitu, to the Entity List, and stipulated that companies such as Nvidia and Intel are not allowed to sell chips to these companies.

However, if we say that a series of initiatives in 2019 are still in the field of hardware , especially chips.

Then this policy at the beginning of 2020 clearly mentioned software .

Moreover, compared with hardware, software is actually more dependent on globalization and open source sharing.

So the US move was shocking.

Provoking controversy

American netizens have begun heated discussions.

Some netizens believe that the US ban on software exports is bound to fail.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence today is inseparable from an open academic and industrial environment. Even a closed company like Apple has an open attitude to attract AI talents.

International exchanges are becoming more and more frequent. Not only transactions between companies, but also private exchanges and network codes cannot prevent the spread of technology. Moreover, multinational companies such as Google have R&D centers in China, and they can use their technology in China without even exporting it.

Currently, there are many projects for geographic image recognition on competition platforms such as Kaggle. On GitHub, there are 14 open source projects just by searching for "geography" + "deep learning". It is still questionable how these open platforms prohibit communication.

Shortly after the ban was introduced, professionals were still discussing the open source geographic imaging software library on the American Medium website.

Some netizens said, will such projects be invisible to China in the future?

In addition to questioning whether the US ban can be implemented, American netizens have also begun to doubt whether the United States is ahead of China in such technology and whether the ban has practical significance.

As the world's largest market, China has a leading advantage in AI technology. For example, the world's most technologically advanced drone company (DJI) is in China, and there are a large number of companies engaged in autonomous driving research in China, whose technology is not inferior to that of the United States. This may greatly reduce the effectiveness of the US ban.

Therefore, every blockade and embargo is like a seven-injury punch to the United States - it hurts others and itself.

Furthermore, the United States' repeated introduction of similar measures is undoubtedly pushing a certain type of technology company into "danger." Compared with hardware, the growth of the software world is driven by the power of open source and trust.

Now that a US policy has been released, even software technologies that are no longer blocked may be re-evaluated.

Android, iOS, TensorFlow, or Photoshop, AE...

Will it one day become a weapon for the United States to suppress others?

Reference Links:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-artificial-intelligence/us-government-limits-exports-of-artificial-intelligence-software-idUSKBN1Z21PT

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2019-27649.pdf

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21953593