Chinese entities use cloud services to access limited US AI chips

Chinese entities are reportedly using cloud services offered by companies such as Amazon to access advanced U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chips and AI capabilities that are otherwise restricted from being exported directly to China. Reuters Agency.

This method of access does not violate U.S. regulations because it does not involve direct export or technology transfer.

Review by Reuters Agency tender documents revealed that at least 11 Chinese entities bid for such proprietary U.S. cloud technologies or services over the past year.

Four of these entities listed Amazon Web Services as a supplier, although they were accessed through Chinese intermediaries.

For example, Shenzhen University spent about $27,996 (199,804 yuan) through Yunda Technology to access Nvidia A100 and H100 chips via AWS for an undisclosed project.

These chips, which are essential for powering large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are banned from exporting to China.

Neither Shenzhen University nor Yunda Technology responded to requests for comment, and Nvidia declined to comment on the matter.

Zhejiang Lab also expressed its intention to invest in AWS for its AI model, GeoGPT, due to the insufficient computing power of domestic vendor Alibaba.

However, Zhejiang Lab later said it had not finalized the purchase and did not provide details on how it met its computing requirements.

The report notes that the U.S. government is aware of such practices and is seeking to tighten regulations aimed at restricting access to its cloud-based technology.

Legislation has been introduced to allow the Commerce Department to regulate remote access to U.S. technology. Proposed rules would require U.S. cloud services to verify and report on users of large AI models.

“AWS complies with all applicable U.S. laws, including trade regulations, regarding the provision of AWS services in China and outside of China,” a spokesman for Amazon’s cloud services division said, according to the news agency.

US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Reuters Agency“I have been concerned about this gap for years and it is high time to address it.”

In addition to Amazon, Chinese entities also use Microsoft’s services.

Sichuan University’s tender document indicated plans to build a generative AI platform using Microsoft Azure OpenAI tokens provided by Sichuan Province Xuedong Technology.

Microsoft, Sichuan University and Sichuan Province Xuedong Technology also did not comment on the matter.

OpenAI said its services are not supported in China and that the Azure OpenAI service operates in accordance with Microsoft policy, without commenting on tenders.

In addition, the Suzhou Institute of Advanced Research, operating at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), announced a tender for 500 cloud servers, each with eight Nvidia A100 processors, supplied by the Hefei Advanced Computing Center.

The cloud provider was not named, and USTC, which is on a U.S. “entity list” for acquiring technology that potentially aids the Chinese military, did not respond to requests for comment.

The text, “Chinese Entities Use Cloud Services to Access Proprietary US AI Chips,” was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData brand.

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