The FBI released a statement Saturday about misleading videos circulating ahead of the election, saying it was aware of two videos that “falsely claim to be from the FBI related to election security.” One of these videos claims that the FBI has “caught three connected groups committing ballot fraud” and one about Kamala Harris’ husband. The FBI said both featured false content.
Misinformation — including the spread of political deepfakes and other forms of misleading videos and imagery — has been a major concern in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election.
Just a day earlier, the FBI, along with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said they had detected two other videos linked to “Russian influence actors,” including one “which falsely depicts individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia.”
The Biden administration has unveiled its “AI proliferation rule”, which aims to restrict the export of GPUs that are most coveted for AI applications. Although it doesn’t name the country, it is largely seen as a means to prevent China from overtaking the US in AI development.
The rule proposes three licensing tiers. The first tier is unrestricted and includes the domestic market as well as 18 strategic allies. Most countries fall into the second tier, which will have limits on how much computing power they can import from the US via top GPUs. The third tier includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and effectively prevents US companies from selling their most powerful GPUs there.
US-based companies will also be prevented from sharing many details of their AI software models with countries outside the first tier, and will have to get permission from the federal government before building large data centers in any second-tier country.
Several parties, including the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), issued statements condemning the decision, believing the restrictions would push countries to work with China. “The new rule risks causing unintended and lasting harm to the U.S. economy and global competitiveness in semiconductors and AI by ceding strategic markets to our competitors,” the SIA wrote.
NVIDIA also objected, with the company’s vice president of government affairs Ned Finkel saying the Biden administration “seeks to undermine America’s leadership with a 200+ page regulatory morass, crafted in secret and without proper legislative review.”
The rule has a 120-day comment period, so whether or not it will remain in the incoming Trump administration is an open question.