TalTech professor: AI chip restrictions on Estonia won't make much difference

Restrictions of exports on Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips to Estonia announced last week will not impact the ability of Estonia or Europe more broadly to develop AI, Professor Tanel Tammet of Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) said.
On the other hand, the fact that the U.S. is striving to maintain its advantage over China in military applications of AI in this way can only be a good thing, Tammet went on.
Expert: No impact on Estonia
Speaking to "Terevisioon" Monday, Tammet stated that the restrictions on AI chips, also known as AI accelerators, have no impact on Estonia, despite the restriction being applied to Estonia, and the resulting political inconvenience.
He said: "In no way [would there be any negative impact], as the chips themselves are not prohibited; what is barred is importing them in mass quantities."
"We could easily import around 30,000 units," he added.
"And even those 30,000 units would cost a lot. Each chip costs around €30,000," Tammet went on, noting that the largest AI training cluster in Europe is just next door, in Finland – a situation which Estonia, even with the restrictions, could in theory match.
"[Even] with these restrictions, we could also build a similar, if even larger cluster—doing so is not yet restricted," he added.
Tammet noted that special exemptions allow for purchasing the chips in quantities of "thousands" at a time.
The rationale behind the restrictions was preventing too vast a quantity of AI chips reaching China, mainly.
"The entire focus is solely on preventing the creation of very large supercomputer systems or redirecting massive quantities towards China," Tammet went on.
In fact, Estonia would struggle to breach the restriction limit even if it tried, the professor added.
"Despite the political inconvenience, this does not hinder us in any way. We can still import them in pretty large quantities; we simply wouldn't reach the limit of these restrictions—it's completely unrealistic," he added.
The issue also needs to be placed in a broader European context, Temmet said, bearing in mind many mostly Western European nations have had no restrictions or bans imposed upon them.
If, for example, the Germans or the British wanted to build a supercluster, these restrictions would not apply to them, Tammet added.
Ultimately, it was a case of proceeding with caution, Tammet noted, saying: "I think we could turn this narrative or concern on its head and state that it's not such a bad thing that the U.S. is being cautious and trying to keep itself—and, in fact, also major European countries—one step ahead of China."
Geopolitical concerns
"[The concern with AI] is not that the Chinese might build a better chatbot but that they tend to use these technologies for military purposes. The U.S. has always been deeply concerned about military implications," Tammet explained.
"China, according to Tammet, is a very advanced country in the field of AI. "They are doing very powerful things, and in some areas, they are far ahead of the U.S. Their internal capabilities and the number of top specialists are highly impressive, making this a grave matter," he went on.
"[The U.S. administration is primarily concerned that China] The U.S. has consistently imposed various restrictions on China in this area on many cases. [They (the U.S.) are also limiting the export of machines used for chip production. They also prohibit the export of large language models]."
Tammet noted that if you want to build powerful AI systems, such as chatbots or those that recognize images well, you need to train them extensively, and for training speed, you require a tremendous amount of computational power.
Major AI companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Google have built large supercomputers with tens of thousands of units, allowing for faster learning despite the time-consuming process.
"Essentially, the usual graphics cards used in gaming, which are capable of performing many small calculations, are taken for this purpose," he added.
"China itself does not have significant capacity for producing high-end chips," Tammet noted.
The outgoing Biden administration, as one of its last acts, introduced rules on the export of AI chips, categorizing countries into three groups: Permitted, strictly prohibited, and with a gray zone in between, with some restrictions, in which Estonia falls, along with Latvia, Lithuania, most other CEE nations, and also Switzerland.
That many of these restricted countries are key NATO member states has added to the concerns. Russia, Belarus, China, Iran, and several other nations, chiefly in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and to a lesser extent Latin America, are also on the banned list.
Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna (Eesti 200) has hit out at the U.S. decision, calling it unjustified, harmful, and thoughtless, and affecting not only second-category countries like Estonia but also the U.S. itself.
Prime Minister Kristen Michal (Reform) has also expressed a view that dividing Europe in this way is unacceptable.
An AI chip or AI accelerator is a specialized hardware designed to speed up AI and machine learning tasks, such as neural networks and computer vision, and is used in devices like smartphones, laptops, and cloud computing servers.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte