China’s cyber regulator on Thursday said it had held a meeting with Nvidia over what it called “serious security issues” with the company’s artificial intelligence chips.
It said US AI experts had “revealed that Nvidia’s computing chips have location tracking and can remotely shut down the technology.”
The Cyberspace Administration of China requested that Nvidia explain the security problems associated with the H20 chip, which was designed for the Chinese market to comply with US export restrictions, and submit documentation to support their case. The announcement comes as Nvidia is rebuilding its China business after Washington this month lifted a ban on H20 sales to the country.
This doesn’t really make sense. Why would your computer give the GPU / NPU access to GPS location? Unless Nvidia is somehow embedding GPS sensors in their chips - which would be obvious to Chinese cybersecurity - this should be a simple software fix. Intel Management Engine is a genuine risk, but I think China has banned / restricted Intel CPUs already.
Can’t wait for this to be generalized so that Easy Anti-Cheat or PunkBuster tell EA or Bethesda to lock your GPU because their faulty launcher detected you tried to play offline twice.
Initially preventing “bad guys” (really big quotes here) to do “bag things” (AFAICT it’s mostly lame LLMs, not actual dangerous military stuff, which for those they actually already have supercomputers allocated) sounds like a good idea… until it inexorably tricky down (unlike money and power) to citizens worldwide.
I don’t think remotely control CPUs or GPUs can end well for citizens. It won’t be PC as in Personal Computer, rather remotely controlled terminals for whomever is in power.
Oooh spicy!! I wonder how much infra in China is powered by these chips
Oh no, poor China!
I see the fash instance is leaking again
