Establishment of Reporting Requirements for the Development of Advanced Artificial Intelligence Models and Computing Clusters

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Bureau of Industry and Security</SUBAGY> <CFR>15 CFR Part 702</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240905-0231]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0694-AJ55</RIN> <SUBJECT>Establishment of Reporting Requirements for the Development of Advanced Artificial Intelligence Models and Computing Clusters</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comment <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule would amend the Bureau of Industry and Security's (BIS) Industrial Base Surveys—Data Collections regulations by establishing reporting requirements for the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models and computing clusters under the Executive order of October 30, 2023, “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this proposed rule must be received by BIS by no later than October 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments on this proposed rule may be submitted to the Federal rulemaking portal ( <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> ). The <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> ID for this proposed rule is: BIS-2024-0047. Please refer to RIN 0694-AJ55 in all comments. Anyone submitting business confidential information should clearly identify any business confidential portion of a comment at the time of submission, file a statement justifying nondisclosure and referring to the specific legal authority claimed, and provide a non-confidential version of the submission. For comments submitted electronically containing business confidential information, the file name of the business confidential version should begin with the characters “BC.” Any page containing business confidential information must be clearly marked “BUSINESS CONFIDENTIAL” on the top of that page. The corresponding non-confidential version of those comments must be clearly marked “PUBLIC.” The file name of the non-confidential version should begin with the character “P.” Any submissions with file names that do not begin with either a “BC” or a “P” will be assumed to be public and will be made publicly available through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Commenters submitting business confidential information are encouraged to scan a hard copy of the non-confidential version to create an image of the file, rather than submitting a digital copy with redactions applied, to avoid inadvertent redaction errors which could enable the public to read business confidential information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Sean Delehanty, Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security Bureau of Industry and Security, Department of Commerce. Phone: 202-316-5765; Email: <E T="03">Sean.Delehanty@bis.doc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 4.2(a)(i) of Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023, “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence” (E.O. 14110), directs the Secretary of Commerce to require companies developing, or demonstrating an intent to develop, potential dual-use foundation AI models to provide certain information to the Federal Government on an ongoing basis. Additionally, section 4.2(a)(ii) of E.O. 14110 directs the Secretary of Commerce to require companies, individuals, or other organizations or entities that acquire, develop, or possess a potential large-scale computing cluster to report any such acquisition, development, or possession, including the existence and location of these clusters and the amount of total computing power available in each cluster. As defined under E.O. 14110, a “dual-use foundation model” is “trained on broad data; generally uses self-supervision; contains at least tens of billions of parameters; is applicable across a wide range of contexts; and that exhibits, or could be easily modified to exhibit, high levels of performance at tasks that pose a serious risk to security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.” The reporting requirements proposed in this regulation are intended to apply to dual-use foundation models that meet technical conditions issued by the Department. The Department expects to update the technical conditions, based on technological advancements, as necessary and appropriate, as directed by section 4.2(b) of E.O. 14110. E.O. 14110 directs the Department of Commerce (Department) to collect information about dual-use foundation models in accordance with the Defense Production Act (DPA) (50 U.S.C. 4501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). Under the DPA, the President is authorized to take actions that ensure the U.S. industrial base is prepared to supply products and services to support the national defense. In this context, the term “national defense” means “programs for military and energy production or construction, military or critical infrastructure assistance to any foreign nation, homeland security, stockpiling, space, and any directly related activity” (50 U.S.C. 4552(14)). Additionally, the DPA makes clear that the international competitiveness of the U.S. industrial base directly affects its ability to support the national defense (see 50 U.S.C. 4502(a)(7)). Among other authorities, the DPA authorizes the President “by regulation, subpoena, or otherwise, to obtain such information from, require such reports and the keeping of such records by, make such inspection of the books, records, and other writings, premises or property of, and take the sworn testimony of, and administer oaths and affirmations to, any person as may be necessary or appropriate, in his discretion, to the enforcement or the administration of” the DPA (50 U.S.C. 4555(a)). The DPA further specifies that this grant of authority “includes the authority to obtain information in order to perform industry studies assessing the capabilities of the United States industrial base to support the national defense” (50 U.S.C. 4555(a)). To carry out its obligations under section 4.2(a) of E.O. 14110, BIS is exercising its DPA authority, which was delegated to the Department by the President in Executive Order 13603, and subsequently re-delegated within the Department to BIS, to collect information from U.S. companies that are developing, have plans to develop, or have the computing hardware necessary to develop dual-use foundation models. AI models are quickly becoming integral to numerous U.S. industries that are essential to the national defense. For example, manufacturers of military equipment ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> aircrafts, tanks, and missile launchers) use AI models to enhance the maneuverability, accuracy, and efficiency of equipment. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Similarly, manufacturers of signal intelligence devices ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> satellites, cameras, and radar) use AI models to improve how those devices capture signals and eliminate noise. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> As a final example, developers of cybersecurity software, which can be applied to protect a wide range of systems and infrastructure that are critical to the national defense, use AI models to increase the speed at which that software detects and responds to cyberattacks. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Shield AI, “Shield AI Conducts AI-Piloted Flights on Sixth Aircraft, the Kratos MQM-178 Firejet” (Mar. 29, 2024), <E T="03">https://shield.ai/shield-ai-conducts-ai-piloted-flights-on-sixth-aircraft-the-kratos-mqm-178-firejet/;</E> RTX, “Raytheon Technologies Unveils Next-Generation Electro-Optical Intelligent-Sensing Capability (Apr. 24, 2023), <E T="03">https://www.rtx.com/news/news-center/2023/04/24/raytheon-technologies-unveils-next-generation-electro-optical-intelligent-sensing.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  National Instruments, “Artificial Intelligence in Software-Defined SIGINT Systems” (Feb. 6, 2024), <E T="03">https://www.ni.com/en/solutions/aerospace-defense/radar-electronic-warfare-sigint/artificial-intelligence-in-software-defined-sigint-systems.html;</E> Northrop Grumman, “Artificial Intelligence Helps Protect Troops in Denied GPS Environments”, <E T="03">https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/artificial-intelligence-helps-protect-troops-in-denied-gps-environments.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  NVIDIA, “NVIDIA and Booz Allen Hamilton Expand Partnership to Bring AI-Enabled Cybersecurity to Public and Private Sectors” (Sept. 20, 2022), <E T="03">https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-booz-allen-hamilton-expand-partnership-to-bring-ai-enabled-cybersecurity-to-public-and-private-sectors;</E> IBM, “AI and Automation for Cybersecurity” (June 2022), <E T="03">https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/ai-cybersecurity.</E> </FTNT> Dual-use foundation models could increase the capabilities of these products and services to an even greater extent. Specifically, integrating dual-use foundation models into products like military equipment, signal intelligence devices, and cybersecurity software could enable those products to operate more effectively across a wider range of environments, to respond more effectively to unexpected signals, and to combat additional types of cyberattacks. Given those potential capabilities, it is essential to the national defense that the defense industrial base is able to integrate dual-use foundation models. Indeed, because industries and governments across the world are actively working to integrate dual-use foundation models into their defense capabilities, the U.S. defense industrial base will need to integrate dual-use foundation models to remain internationally competitive. Accordingly, the U.S. Government m ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 41k characters. 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