Singapore’s Copyright Act already had the best Text and Data Mining exception. If scraped yourself, anything on the Internet is probably legal to train with.
Now, both Europe and the U.S. are trying to regulate both training and distribution of A.I. models. That might make Singapore an even better place for training A.I. models. The only question is if they have any regulations on training or distribution outside of the Copyright Act.
The linked executive order restricts exports of large numbers of GPUs to Singapore, which might make training models there hard, at least until Chinese GPU technology catches up enough.
There’s companies hosting GPU’s in Singapore. There’s also probably places without export restrictions to Singapore that have GPU’s to sell them. They might also buy them in smaller quantities from many suppliers online. Finally, they could try distributed training on the various, low-cost clouds.
A higher-risk option would be to build or buy FPGA accelerators. They’ve had lots of FPGA’s over there. They might be able to do A.I. on them. It would also be easier for their engineers to port published designs to FPGA’s than to make ASIC’s. Then, maybe make their own FPGA like some academic teams did.
> Restricting the transfer to non-trusted actors of the model weights for advanced closed-weight models. The rule does not in any way inhibit the publication of model weights for open-weight models.
> Setting security standards to protect the weights of advanced closed-weight AI models, permitting them to be stored and used securely around the world while helping prevent illicit adversary access.
Controlling the weights is becoming critical for the US…
I think it's interesting that they're actually using the term "open-weight" here instead of what AI corps would want you to use which would be "open-source", trying to conflate sources and weights. Perhaps a good sign, for a week.
> Restricting the transfer to non-trusted actors of the model weights for advanced closed-weight models. The rule does not in any way inhibit the publication of model weights for open-weight models.
So the rule pre-supposes that close-weight models will just always be better than their open-weight counterparts. How do they know this will hold up?
>So the rule pre-supposes that close-weight models will just always be better than their open-weight counterparts
It doesn't necessarily presuppose that. Trying to limit the export of open weight models would likely fail on first amendment grounds, the same way the supreme court struck down attempts to limit the export of "military grade" cryptography.
>As the First Trump Administration demonstrated, America wins through innovation, competition and by sharing our technologies with the world — not by retreating behind a wall of government overreach.
yes, but even so it's a choice to essentially say "we need a president who doesn't want to build walls, like donald trump". But obviously even in a less literal reading this is on its face just not true based on his presidency, whether you think that's a good thing or not.
It's nauseating, but much worse than that, the parade of newly minted corporate sycophants is only encouraging more authoritarian threats in the future, because they're demonstrating how well they work.
It's like the battered wife trying to please her wife beating husband to avoid a black eye.
Trump's tariffs plan is all about wielding power over companies. Now companies need to suck up to him to avoid tariffs as much as possible. Suck up could mean public endorsements, pressure on other companies, campaign "donations" (bribes), "investments" (bribes) etc.
It is political power for money in a direct way and it is going to get a lot worse and less subtle.
As far as I can see, if Trump follows the rhetoric of "Anti-China" for security policy and "America First" trade policy, I believe they will continue with more enforcement.
The 18 countries with no restrictions are: UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. https://www.wired.com/story/new-us-rule-aims-to-block-chinas...
Israel probably due to NPT violations (same with India) and probably Singapore due to existing compliance issues with export controlled products being exported to China or Russia (same with UAE and India).
Well, there's a bunch of different dimensions of trust.
Britain will work hand-in-hand with the US with regards to fighter jets, nuclear weapons and spy agency cooperation.
But America doesn't trust Britain's blood sausage and haggis, or its traditional unpasteurised cheeses. And Britain doesn't trust America's chlorinated chicken, GMOs or guns.
One of the US's largest naval bases is in Singapore, they are one of the very few countries allowed by the US to buy F35s (F35s are interconnected, so being given entry into the F35 program means being given entry to the entire intranet used to manage it), and plenty of US Naval officers cross-train and study with Singaporean naval officers at NUS.
At a macro level they look similar, but when you dig closer it starts to fall to the wayside.
A major driver for Singapore's initial growth was the fact that it is the de facto Oil Refinery hub in ASEAN - much of the oil that is extracted in Malaysia or Indonesia has had to be routed to Singapore at some point.
It has the benefit of having a strong financial service sector thanks to a business law system that strives to maintain parity with that in the UK and the US, but it's a very narrow industry that most Singaporeans don't partake in.
Also, Singapore has always had strong economic relations with it's neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia (even at it's worst points). Most of the business leadership in both countries are ethnic Chinese with blood relations in Singapore, which made it easier for Singapore to leverage it's position.
A major downside I've noticed in SG when I've travelled there a bunch is the lack of a truly strong innovation ecosystem. Sure there are plenty of startups, but most of them are just Chinese or Indian startups that are leveraging a Singapore CoLo to simplify investment. Much of the actual R&D and even leadership capacity remains in China or India.
SG is a very hierarchical country and that really limits their innovation capacity. Back in my undergrad, I knew 5 A*STAR candidates and a couple other bonded service candidates - of them maybe 50% returned to Singapore, and those that did were from households who owned a house (iykyk). The rest got offers with tech companies here in the US and broke bond. Even in the SAF, races segregate into their own units (eg. Ethnic Malays are de facto banned from airforce and high clearance positions).
The East in the Middle East (and frankly also the ‘Middle’) has nothing to do with it being in Asia.
If it did, Japan would likely be the Middle East. Or maybe Thailand, depending.
Instead, Japanese and Chinese are typically referred to as ‘East Asians’.
Usually, if someone is going to say anything at all about West or Central Asians, they tend to be referring to the ‘stans and/or Mongolia. Since Russia’s a bit… special. And takes up most of the rest.
Your first statement proves my point that Israel is in Asia. Unless you believe that Western Asia is not in Asia or that people in Western Asia are not Asians. China and Japan are referred to as the Far East. As I said, the keyword is "East" which references Asia. The "Middle" refers to it being between Europe and the Far East. Hence the Middle East. I thought this was common knowledge.
I don't think there is any need for sarcasm. It's common knowledge that there are 6-7 continents (depending on how you want to count the Americas).
No one in western media is going to say Western Asia for the Middle East. As you well know. I’ve never heard it in media in Asia either.
And most people in the English speaking world would be very confused if you tried - just like you were, when you tried to say it was because the Middle East was in East Asia, or had anything to do with it being in Asia - which that link makes clear it doesn’t.
Not sure why you hold the media to such a high standard given its history of ignoring the science regarding health claims, climate change denials or covid misinformation. I wouldn't focus too much on that. :)
"you tried to say it was because the Middle East was in East Asia". I didn't. This is what I said (quoted): "Middle East is a region in Asia". And you said "The Middle East is in Western Asia" which supports my point.
Most people in the English speaking world get confused with basic math (as indicated by studies by the OECD and Santander among others) or world geography (especially concerning territories outside the western world, this seems to be anecdotally true in the US).
Along with every other country in Eastern Europe, plus long-time NATO members Greece and Turkey. And in the West, there's Iceland, Luxembourg and Portugal.
The US' usual pressure tactic is to create a bluff, first raise sanctions, and use this as a bargaining chip in negotiations to gain benefits.
If you observe closely enough, you will find that every time before the U.S. government negotiates with the Chinese government, it announces new sanctions or other pressure tactics.
Biden, however, played the card that Trump was going to play prematurely.
Trump can not go 'harder', because Biden has compressed Trump's tactical space.
So, when Trump enters the White House, he will find that he has few cards left to play - Chips, Oil, Ukrain War, interest rates, debt and deficit
, etc
Instead, there'll be mines left for him by Biden admin.
> I think you're taking Trump too lightly.
I didn't
You're talking about another thing.
Trump(or Biden admin)'s tactic is - move/push 3 step forward, back 1 step, use it to trade China's concession
Let's take TikTok ban as an example, if Biden didn't rush to play it and traded nothing, it will be a card of Trump, Trump can use it to trade(or threat) profit.
ofc Trump can seek other cards to play, but the TikTok card, and the Chip sanction card, were wasted by Biden, Trump can not go further in these two topics.
It's not about China or Chinese merchants, it's the game between Biden and Trump, and their parties.
Either one of these two president are willing or able to be friendly to China, there's no different, Trump will pressure China with tarrifs, Biden pressured China with geopolitical/financial containment and regime change
The only difference is which one will harm the US more.
In seriousness, this make Meta's decision to push open weight models incredibly valuable. Now there's no restrictions on their geographic use or "Security Standards" unlike their competitors.
You and I have to compete in this "competitive" job market thanks to AI, but we can't have US megacorps compete with China who might develop better tools used to swindle us.
Is there a Viktor Bout of GPU smuggling? Has any journalist written about it? Whenever I see discussions of GPU restrictions I just think about what would happen if I boarded a US to China flight with a stack of H100s in my carry-on.
Note Oracle's statement is already a week old (Jan 5th), it's not in response to this Whitehouse order. Expect we'll see a new statement from them soon.
80 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadNow, both Europe and the U.S. are trying to regulate both training and distribution of A.I. models. That might make Singapore an even better place for training A.I. models. The only question is if they have any regulations on training or distribution outside of the Copyright Act.
A higher-risk option would be to build or buy FPGA accelerators. They’ve had lots of FPGA’s over there. They might be able to do A.I. on them. It would also be easier for their engineers to port published designs to FPGA’s than to make ASIC’s. Then, maybe make their own FPGA like some academic teams did.
> Setting security standards to protect the weights of advanced closed-weight AI models, permitting them to be stored and used securely around the world while helping prevent illicit adversary access.
Controlling the weights is becoming critical for the US…
So the rule pre-supposes that close-weight models will just always be better than their open-weight counterparts. How do they know this will hold up?
It doesn't necessarily presuppose that. Trying to limit the export of open weight models would likely fail on first amendment grounds, the same way the supreme court struck down attempts to limit the export of "military grade" cryptography.
that's kind of a strange thing to say
Not when your goal is to publicly fellate Donald Trump.
But unfortunately we exist in a ridiculous timeline.
It's like the battered wife trying to please her wife beating husband to avoid a black eye.
It is political power for money in a direct way and it is going to get a lot worse and less subtle.
Many of you purchased merchandise with DeCSS code written on it.
Structuring, but for gpus. Seems like the sort of loophole you could drive a truck through.
Singapore and Israel are notably absent.
Just a small correction.
India is not a signatory to NPT. There's no violation.
Just because you aren't a party to an agreement doesn't mean you aren't in violation of it.
Britain will work hand-in-hand with the US with regards to fighter jets, nuclear weapons and spy agency cooperation.
But America doesn't trust Britain's blood sausage and haggis, or its traditional unpasteurised cheeses. And Britain doesn't trust America's chlorinated chicken, GMOs or guns.
One of the US's largest naval bases is in Singapore, they are one of the very few countries allowed by the US to buy F35s (F35s are interconnected, so being given entry into the F35 program means being given entry to the entire intranet used to manage it), and plenty of US Naval officers cross-train and study with Singaporean naval officers at NUS.
A major driver for Singapore's initial growth was the fact that it is the de facto Oil Refinery hub in ASEAN - much of the oil that is extracted in Malaysia or Indonesia has had to be routed to Singapore at some point.
It has the benefit of having a strong financial service sector thanks to a business law system that strives to maintain parity with that in the UK and the US, but it's a very narrow industry that most Singaporeans don't partake in.
Also, Singapore has always had strong economic relations with it's neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia (even at it's worst points). Most of the business leadership in both countries are ethnic Chinese with blood relations in Singapore, which made it easier for Singapore to leverage it's position.
A major downside I've noticed in SG when I've travelled there a bunch is the lack of a truly strong innovation ecosystem. Sure there are plenty of startups, but most of them are just Chinese or Indian startups that are leveraging a Singapore CoLo to simplify investment. Much of the actual R&D and even leadership capacity remains in China or India.
SG is a very hierarchical country and that really limits their innovation capacity. Back in my undergrad, I knew 5 A*STAR candidates and a couple other bonded service candidates - of them maybe 50% returned to Singapore, and those that did were from households who owned a house (iykyk). The rest got offers with tech companies here in the US and broke bond. Even in the SAF, races segregate into their own units (eg. Ethnic Malays are de facto banned from airforce and high clearance positions).
it’s a different enough area geologically and politically, there is a reason everyone calls the region the middle east.
Do you imagine people calling the Earth flat because "everyone says it is"?
The East in the Middle East (and frankly also the ‘Middle’) has nothing to do with it being in Asia.
If it did, Japan would likely be the Middle East. Or maybe Thailand, depending.
Instead, Japanese and Chinese are typically referred to as ‘East Asians’.
Usually, if someone is going to say anything at all about West or Central Asians, they tend to be referring to the ‘stans and/or Mongolia. Since Russia’s a bit… special. And takes up most of the rest.
The more you know.
I don't think there is any need for sarcasm. It's common knowledge that there are 6-7 continents (depending on how you want to count the Americas).
And most people in the English speaking world would be very confused if you tried - just like you were, when you tried to say it was because the Middle East was in East Asia, or had anything to do with it being in Asia - which that link makes clear it doesn’t.
"you tried to say it was because the Middle East was in East Asia". I didn't. This is what I said (quoted): "Middle East is a region in Asia". And you said "The Middle East is in Western Asia" which supports my point.
Most people in the English speaking world get confused with basic math (as indicated by studies by the OECD and Santander among others) or world geography (especially concerning territories outside the western world, this seems to be anecdotally true in the US).
He seems unlikely to make it easier for China, at least without something in return.
The US' usual pressure tactic is to create a bluff, first raise sanctions, and use this as a bargaining chip in negotiations to gain benefits. If you observe closely enough, you will find that every time before the U.S. government negotiates with the Chinese government, it announces new sanctions or other pressure tactics. Biden, however, played the card that Trump was going to play prematurely.
Trump can not go 'harder', because Biden has compressed Trump's tactical space.
So, when Trump enters the White House, he will find that he has few cards left to play - Chips, Oil, Ukrain War, interest rates, debt and deficit , etc Instead, there'll be mines left for him by Biden admin.
https://www.newsweek.com/trade-surplus-china-economy-exports...
Apparently Trump can't do this because Biden cut off his options..?
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/trump-unleash-nearly-40...
Trump can't cancel MFN because Biden already cancelled MFN?
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/04/trump-pntr-status-china...
I think you're taking Trump too lightly.
You're talking about another thing.
Trump(or Biden admin)'s tactic is - move/push 3 step forward, back 1 step, use it to trade China's concession
Let's take TikTok ban as an example, if Biden didn't rush to play it and traded nothing, it will be a card of Trump, Trump can use it to trade(or threat) profit.
ofc Trump can seek other cards to play, but the TikTok card, and the Chip sanction card, were wasted by Biden, Trump can not go further in these two topics.
It's not about China or Chinese merchants, it's the game between Biden and Trump, and their parties.
Either one of these two president are willing or able to be friendly to China, there's no different, Trump will pressure China with tarrifs, Biden pressured China with geopolitical/financial containment and regime change
The only difference is which one will harm the US more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump%E2%80%93TikTok_co...
If it's happens, Trump will take credit for it, while Biden did all the work.
Trump: 1, Biden: 0.
Trump seems to have very little to lose in a maximum policy towards China. Time for Trump to go full retard.
Nvidia Statement on the Biden Administration's Misguided 'AI Diffusion' Rule
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42682773
And then we don't want GPT4o closed models going over the fence, but we are ok with Llama3.3?
I am I reading this correctly?
Considering Meta's view about the new president, the new Llama might become closed source at any moment now.
I actually prefer "reproducible" models with their code and training data attached, but we don't live in that world, yet.
Huawei GPUs
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
It seems like it may hurt open source efforts.
Oracle: Export Control Diffusion Confusion
https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/export-control... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42690300)