Future AI Export Controls Should Allow US Tech Firms to ‘Compete,’ Industry Official Says
The Trump administration should make sure its replacement to the Biden-era AI diffusion rule (see 2505130018) allows U.S. companies to compete fairly with foreign firms, industry officials said at the Federal Communications Bar Association annual seminar last week.
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Cheryl Davis, senior director for strategic initiatives at Oracle, said the Biden rule was “framed” as helping American technology leadership stay ahead of China, but it actually represented “a receding of America’s ability to fairly compete,” she said during the seminar. She said the rule -- which set new worldwide license restrictions and caps on shipments of AI chips to certain nations -- risked pushing U.S. trading partners to buy chips and related technology from other countries, including China, she said.
“When I saw the diffusion role,” Davis said, she thought: “‘Well, gee, aren't we just causing another Huawei problem?’ If people can’t have access to U.S. technology, AI technology, they're going to go somewhere else. They're not going to be left out of the AI revolution.”
"There has to be a way where we can just go out and compete," she said.
Scott Thompson, head of policy and outreach at Samsung, said the government and industry should be “working together and partnering” as the Trump administration develops new export controls. “That's very easy to say and hard to do in practice on some of these issues,” he said, “but it's worth talking about the importance of bringing industry to the table when you're thinking through these really complex issues and making sure that the effects are not worse than the harms or the issues you're trying to resolve.”
He also said the U.S. needs to work with other countries on any new restrictions. "The U.S. government needs to work with partners to align approaches where possible, to make sure that actions in one government don't inadvertently undermine competitiveness or opportunities," Thompson said.