SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The US government has placed software designed to train neural networks to analyse satellite images under new export controls in a bid to prevent foreign adversaries using said code.
The decision, made by Uncle Sam's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), is effective today. Vendors shipping software subject to the controls – in that the applications help machine learning systems annotate satellite images in a particular way – will have to apply for a license to sell their products to customers outside of the US and Canada.
"Items warrant control for export because the items may provide a significant military or intelligence advantage to the United States or because foreign policy reasons justify control," the BIS said.
Hah!
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
US to Restrict Export of AI Technology for Image Analysis
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 21 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
Many Myths are based on truth
-- Spock, "The Way to Eden", stardate 5832.3
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 07 2020, @08:18PM (1 child)
Hard to get them back in the box.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 07 2020, @08:59PM
The standard issue genie re-bottler holds 20 5.56×45mm NATO rounds in its magazine.
But more seriously, do move all your academic code off of US-based GitHub, if you want to still collaborate on it internationally in 5 years.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday January 07 2020, @08:21PM (14 children)
Because this worked so well, back when the US restricted the export of encryption software. Seriously, the rest of the world just laughed. Once the algorithms are out there (and those are - often as not - developed outside the US), the software is irrelevant.
Of course, one wouldn't expect politicians and bureaucrats to understand this.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday January 07 2020, @08:50PM (8 children)
Well, AI is different in degree. It's even more complex. Just try to print an AI program in PERL on a t-shirt. But it would still fit in a book.
And you're also right that it's often developed outside the country. I think Japan and China are two of the top players. China may be ahead on image recognition. (OTOH, I'm no expert in the field, and that's just my, relatively uninformed, view.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:05PM (5 children)
A classifier node is basically one for loop. A neural net is just a bunch of those linked together, a 10 line script to provide feedback to weights, and a giant pile of training data.
A generative adversarial network is just two of those.
Absolutely shirtable.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 08 2020, @06:59PM (4 children)
You are underestimating the complexity of the process. And I don't know by how much, merely that it's significantly.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 08 2020, @07:06PM (3 children)
There's huge fucking hardware requirements when you start talking about the 50 layers used in ResNet-50 operating in reasonable time, but the overall code structure is remarkably compact.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 08 2020, @07:35PM (2 children)
There's certainly a lot of generalized structural similarity, but there are also a large number of specialized functions. Most of the code will use identical modules, but some will require specialized modules, and those will need to be integrated into the rest of the code.
Perhaps I'm overestimating the abilities of the current AIs, but a real AI will need to focus the object recognition on what it's looking for. Skim over most of the image without processing deeply, but when it sees something that looks plausible, evaluate it more closely. Then, if the image is partially obscured, or rotated in an uncommon way, it will need to pass that up to a higher level which will evaluate it again in a larger context.
Even simple object recognition isn't that simple, and when you're looking something in particular the processing gets extra complex (though better at producing the right answer). Part of recognition is deciding whether something that you've possibly seen is reasonable to see in that context. (This is why the students see the demonstrator being stabbed with a knife rather than a banana. So it can lead to errors.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 08 2020, @07:44PM (1 child)
Well, now you're starting to get unfair. Those t-shirt encryption perl scripts aren't dumping all of TLS with its socket management, streams, error resiliency, key validation, certificate lookup, and the host of complex infrastructure around encryption. They're shifting some bits and doing some math. Of course there's application specific contextualization that needs to happen.
The actual neural net guts are real damn simple, at least in terms of "where the magic happens".
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 08 2020, @11:14PM
Well, if you restrict it to actual visual image processing, and don't consider object recognition as significant, then yeah, you could do it, but you everyone else already has that capability, and has had it for decades.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:27PM
Don't underestimated the T-sizes some Americans need and the terseness of PERL. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:32PM
No, but... just try to teach AI / machine learning techniques in a free online setting like Coursera.
Agreed, the US is a major player in image recognition, but by no means are we playing in a league of our own.
Funny anecdote: I worked for a video security who were developing their own automatic image recognition algorithms and the guys who were doing the actual work were in the US on H1B visas from Russia, Israel, Turkey and I think Senegal...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:52PM
I too remember downloading PGP from a non-US server the last time America forgot that the rest of the world can do maths too.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday January 07 2020, @10:35PM (2 children)
Executive Order 13026, signed by President Bill Clinton, ended the encryption export controls. [govinfo.gov]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 07 2020, @10:59PM (1 child)
Didn't stop them from classifying my thesis work in 92. Oh well.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday January 08 2020, @03:35PM
That's probably because he signed it in 1996!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday January 08 2020, @12:12AM
Hell, how many kids violate copyright, or don't pee in the pool? Who farted in the elevator?
Sure, it's one thing to pass a wishlist and call it law, detecting violations are a completely different animal.
Especially if children are involved in any way.
With the acceptance of computers being routinely told to run arbitrary code from anyone who knows how to ask, Congressmen think they can confine an idea of how to do things? Geez...how many microseconds does it take to send an encrypted document anywhere in the world?
We have a fatal fundamental flaw in most of our computer systems, designed in for the convenience and wishlist enforcement of a very few. The problem is that these mechanisms exist, and are present in nearly all commercial systems. These very same mechanisms are hijaaked, allowing very small factions to have power to inflict enormous damage.
If I convinced a business owner that gasoline made a great floor sanitizer, the bum having a match can easily take the whole place out.
Some have already convinced business owners that having machines with back doors makes sense.
Leaving a lot of us techies in disbelief. Apparently, a course in common sense is not a part of a business education.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Codesmith on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:28PM
As a Canadian, this is so much bullshit.
We are under outside of North America export constraints due to our agreements with the US, but most US vendors will not sell controlled products to Canada because of export constraints.
Win freakin' win.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 07 2020, @09:28PM (1 child)
Like the khazar jews in israel stole everything nuclear bomb-related and also sold the technology off to anyone willing to pay for it, just steal it and use it as your own.
But unlike nuclear technology, A.I related software continues to be updated. The proposed restriction applies only to civilian software, not the version the military has been developing for decades that is generations ahead of anything a civilian project can come up with with limited funds. Therefore the khazar jewish rats sunk their unholy tentacles into the most secret military projects through infiltration, compromised hardware, blackmail of important people and so on.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday January 08 2020, @12:54AM
We do the same.
Ever since I got into this field, it's been about building on the works of my predecessors.
Fixing bugs, refining processes, making a better one, designing it for mass replication, with the intent that anyone who wants some can have them...as many as he wants.
That's my main hurdle right now. Incremental cost of production. I have designed a helluva lot of "Arduino Legos" that can be assembled into damn near any configuration imaginable. And interface methods that allow me to attach hundreds of devices without running out of pins.
If I am productive enough, maybe somebody pulls up all my Arduino designs and interfacing architecture and builds on it. Probably China. I would like to leave a legacy of something useful. I just do not have the office politicing skills to survive under those who are more concerned with Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.
I have grown to despise those who claim to own knowledge. To me, it's a public good, passed from generation to generation. Each generation refines what is given them, and hopefully leaves something better. Forgets the bullshit, and nourishes the good stuff. And leaves history of things that were a bad idea, like Prohibition, that not only failed miserably, but left in it's wake a lot of unintended consequences.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday January 09 2020, @03:42AM
Any big company wanting to make neural nets to analyze satellite images will just cheerfully locate their development lab outside the US and Canada. From there they can sell to the whole world instead of just to the US and Canada.