Proposed legislation threatens AI research collaboration with China | Research And Ideas

Senator Josh Hawley’s “Decoupling America’s Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act,” introduced Jan. 29, proposes significant restrictions on AI research technology exchanges between the United States and China. This legislation could have far-reaching implications for institutions conducting generative AI research such as UC Berkeley. 

The bill seeks to prevent the import and export of AI technologies to and from China, directly impacting how U.S. researchers, including those on campus, collaborate with Chinese entities. These entities are broadly defined in the bill as research labs, universities or other organizations affiliated with Chinese institutions, which could affect a variety of academic partnerships. 

Ritwik Gupta, a Ph.D. candidate in AI on campus, shared his insights on the bill’s potential impact, noting that its implications are much broader than the general public’s online reactions might suggest. 

The proposed restrictions could reshape how campus researchers participate in the global AI community. Gupta said the bill could affect the use of common global AI development tools, such as PyTorch, a library that many machine learning researchers utilize. 

He added that just using these tools could be restricted under the bill.  

“Let’s say a Chinese person affiliated with the Chinese entity of concern contributes some code to a popular project like PyTorch and commits it to GitHub. Then I, on the other side of the world in America, clone that repository and pull down those changes. I have just imported Chinese AI code. Is that illegal? Do I now go to jail and pay the one million dollar fine like the bill says?” Gupta said. 

There are also potential ramifications involving Ph.D. students on campus who attended Chinese undergraduate institutions. According to Gupta, some campus Ph.D. students come from such institutions, and many times their first papers are co-authored with professors at Chinese universities. He added that this would lead to a substantial loss in the AI research community on campus. 

Further, the bill, while presented as protecting American industry, could potentially lead to damaging consequences in the development of AI models, Gupta said. 

“What Senator Hawley is not realizing is that America is reliant on China, and China is reliant on America to make progress in AI. AI itself is stateless, and we can’t arbitrarily split the development of this technology into two worlds because that will actually lead to worse outcomes for everyone. And the first ones to be impacted by this will be American companies,” Gupta said. 

However, the outcome of the proposed bill is still uncertain. 

Despite the serious restrictions presented in the bill, Gupta expressed skepticism about its passage due to its broad wording and likely opposition. 

“At this moment, I am going to continue to share my work openly,” Gupta said. “If the bill gets closer to passing, then I will reconsider that strategy. Until then, I urge the Senator to reconsider this ultimately harmful strategy.”