Looking at China, U.S. proposes 'know your customer' cloud computing requirements

The U.S. is proposing requiring its cloud companies to determine whether foreign entities are accessing U.S. data centers to train AI models.

The Biden administration is proposing requiring U.S. cloud companies to determine whether foreign entities are accessing U.S. data centers to train AI models, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Friday.

"We can't have non-state actors or China or folks who we don’t want accessing our cloud to train their models," Raimondo said in an interview with Reuters. "We use export controls on chips," she noted. "Those chips are in American cloud data centers so we also have to think about closing down that avenue for potential malicious activity."

The Biden administration is taking a series of measures to prevent China from using U.S. technology for artificial intelligence, as the burgeoning sector raises security concerns.

The proposed "know your customer" regulation was released on Friday for public inspection and will be published on Monday. "It is a big deal," Raimondo said.

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The United States is "trying as hard as we can to deny China the compute power that they want to train their own (AI) models, but what good is that if they go around that to use our cloud to train their models?" she said.

Last month, Raimondo said Commerce would not allow Nvidia to ship the “most sophisticated, highest-processing-power AI chips, which would enable China to train their frontier models.”