China and US move to control open-weight AI models
Both governments are positioning themselves for controls on open models, according to the newsletter.
Policy#06
Policy
Image: Interconnects
The short version
- MOFCOM, China's Ministry of Commerce, released a policy proposal that is not yet a law.
- The proposal would require frontier AI models and some other technologies to get government pre-approval before being shared internationally.
- The document states that open-source technologies will be set up for automatic approvals.
- The Department of Homeland Security released an order restricting DeepSeek as a company and its models as a technology platform from being a vendor in federal civilian procurement.
Why it matters
The rules could shape which open-weight models can be shared across borders and which ones US federal agencies can buy. The authors say it is not clear how the DeepSeek order applies to finetuned models or models trained on DeepSeek outputs.
“We found the reaction to this to be overblown”