(Corrects paragraph 6 to reflect that U.S. government guidance to chip companies related to the use of AI systems in making weapons)
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) -Malaysia’s trade ministry is verifying media reports that a Chinese company in the country is using servers equipped with Nvidia and artificial intelligence chips for large language models training, it said on Wednesday.
The ministry “is still in the process of verifying the matter with relevant agencies if any domestic law or regulation has been breached,” it said in a statement.
The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Chinese engineers had flown into Malaysia in early March carrying suitcases filled with hard drives.
It said they sought to build AI models in Malaysian data centres containing servers using Nvidia chips.
The Biden administration had put in place curbs on the export of sophisticated AI chips. Malaysia was in a second tier of countries subject to restrictions, with caps on the number of chips that it could receive.
The Trump administration has since scrapped the curbs, but it has issued guidance reminding U.S. companies that if they have knowledge that an AI chip used in Chinese AI model training will be used for a weapon of mass destruction then a licence may be required.
(Reporting by Danial Azhar; Editing by David Stanway)
