Legislators from the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee this week advanced the AI Overwatch Act, originally introduced in December, which would give ultimate control over the exports of high-performance data center-grade AI processors to adversary nations to Congress. As reported by Reuters, the bill advanced after the White House introduced its new export rules for fairly advanced AI GPUs from AMD and Nvidia to China, along with a mechanism to get a 25% fee from the exporters.
The AI Overwatch Act belongs to the same legislative family as the SAFE Chips Act introduced in early December, designed to curb shipments of advanced AI processors to adversary nations, such as China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, but it does so in a different way. The new bill codifies existing performance limitations that allow AMD and Nvidia to ship their H20 and MI308 processors to entities in adversary nations that are not specifically blacklisted by the U.S. government without an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. However, everything that offers higher performance would not only be subjected to export controls by the DoC but would also require approvals from Congress, which would have veto power, under the new proposals.
