Industry Warns Commerce Against Tight Export Controls on Emerging Tech

The Commerce Department shouldn’t support overly strict export controls on new technology like artificial intelligence that could harm tech innovation and bolster bad actors like China, industry groups commented. The Bureau of Industry and Security published an advance NPRM in November, seeking comment by Thursday on potentially tighter export controls in docket 2018-25221. The department is exploring technology for conventional weapons, intelligence collection and weapons of mass destruction, including AI and machine learning (ML), microprocessors, advanced computers, data analytics, quantum computing, robotics and advanced surveillance.

Exclude “commercially available technologies” from the rulemaking, BSA|The Software Alliance said. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Center for Data Innovation recommended the department not apply export controls to AI and ML. The “broad” list of AI and ML technologies includes widely used technology that has civilian applications like data analytics and neural networks, the center said. “Export restrictions on AI and ML technology could substantially reduce commercial opportunities for U.S. technology companies to sell their AI-enabled products and services.”

“Any new rule should take a measured approach to avoid imposing overly broad restrictions that will harm America’s tech sector without improving national security,” the Internet Association said. An overly restrictive rule would hamper smaller American companies that lack resources, IA said. Ambiguous regulation could end up “deterring startups, researchers, and innovators,” IA added.

ITIF warned against ceding market share to adversaries like China and inadvertently benefiting China’s “aggressive civilian-military technology fusion program focused on forced tech transfer and intellectual property theft.” BIS should focus on “joint venture and technology transactions with Chinese state-owned enterprises with a link to the military,” ITIF said. High-performance computing vendors from Japan, Korea and Taiwan have also seized business because U.S. companies are hamstrung by export control regulations, ITIF said.

Engine warned against constraining innovation, saying American startups will be responsible for the “next great products” using AI, ML and advanced computing. Subjecting those technologies to tighter regulation is worrying U.S. startups, Engine said. The rulemaking’s categories span a “wide variety of non-mature, hard-to-define technologies,” Harvard University Vice Provost-Research Richard McCullough wrote. He urged the department to balance national security interests with the need for American competitiveness in science and technology.

Allow an “iterative process” giving industry “an opportunity to provide evidence about the potential consequences that new controls could have on US technological leadership,” BSA said. By assigning the Commerce Department for this effort, Congress “sensibly recognized that long-term national security is dependent on the US remaining the global hub for innovation,” it said.

Premature regulation could hurt the progress of AI, and the U.S. should support a strategy relying on ingenuity of industries and individuals working in “concert” with government, not in conflict, American Action Forum Director-Technology and Innovation Policy Will Rinehart blogged Thursday. “Large firms have taken the lead on AI implementation and shouldn’t be punished for doing so.”