Tech group urges US to end law restricting global access to i-chips By Reuters

by Karen Frifeld

(Reuters) – A technology industry group urged President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday to refrain from issuing a last-minute rule restricting global access to AI chips, saying the ban would threaten America’s leadership in artificial intelligence.

The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents companies such as Amazon (NASDAQ: ), Microsoft (NASDAQ: ) and Meta (NASDAQ: ), said the legislation, which could be enacted Friday, would create arbitrary restrictions on U.S. companies. Selling computing systems overseas and ceding the global market to competitors.

Reuters last month reported on the specifics of the Commerce Department’s plan to approve global AI chip exports and prevent bad actors from accessing them. The main purpose of the ban is to prevent AI from overwhelming China’s military capabilities.

In a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, ITI CEO Jason Oxman criticized the administration’s “position” to publish the rule in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency. Donald Trump will be inaugurated on January 20.

“A rush to finalize comprehensive and complex legislation could have significant negative consequences,” Oxman said in the Jan. 7 letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

While praising ITI’s commitment to national security, the letter said, “The potential threats to US global leadership in AI are real and must be taken seriously.”

The group called for such control to be issued as planned, not as proposed regulation, as its geopolitical and economic implications are significant.

Neither the Commerce Department nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.

Industry opposition to the proposed regulation is becoming increasingly vague and public.

The Semiconductor Industry Association issued a statement on Monday night. And on Sunday, Ken Glueck, executive vice president at Oracle (NYSE:), said in a blog post that instead of targeting worrisome activities, the regulation “will drop the mother of all regulations on the commercial cloud industry, regulating … almost. For the first time in history All business cloud computing globally.

The bill, titled “Export Control Framework for the Diffusion of Artificial Intelligence,” will go down as one of the most destructive acts to hit the U.S. tech industry, he said.