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upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

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upstart [soylentnews.org] writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

I spy, with my little satellite AI, something beginning with 'North American image-analysis code embargo' [theregister.co.uk]:

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 [federalregister.gov].

The US military has spent countless taxpayers' dollars investing in AI technology to process satellite-gathered intelligence, and it doesn’t want to give countries including China and Russia the opportunity to develop similar capabilities using American-built technology, particularly if this tech was funded by Uncle Sam.

This latest move doesn’t explicitly restrict the export of AI algorithms, we note. Instead, it covers collections of tools that process and label geospatial imagery so that the resulting data can be used to train deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to point out interesting features in spy satellite snaps.

For example, to fall under the new rules, the software has to provide a graphical user interface that allows customers to label objects in images, such as vehicles and houses, in order to ultimately train a CNN to automatically highlight things like military bases and sensitive facilities in future satellite photos.

The training software must also "reduce pixel variation by performing scale, color, and rotational normalization" to fall under these controls.

Companies hoping to sell such software to customers outside of the US and Canada will have to describe its technical capabilities in detail in an application to the Department of Commerce.

Other items also on the same export control list include equipment that produces tritium [federalregister.gov] – a radioactive isotope [nrc.gov], used, among other things, to boost nuclear fission weapons – plus any resin substances that prevent x-rays or terahertz microscopy imaging. ®

Hah!

Original Submission