Microsoft has reportedly asked employees of its cloud computing and artificial intelligence businesses based in China to consider relocating outside the country as Washington blocks Beijing's access to advanced technology.
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The Wall Street Journal broke the news on Thursday, reporting that the staff, made up mostly of Chinese engineers, were offered the opportunity to relocate to countries including the US, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, according to anonymous sources.
A source told the WSJ that Microsoft had made the offer to about 700 to 800 people in total, working on machine learning and other cloud computing-related work.
In a statement shared with CNBC, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company had "shared an optional internal transfer opportunity with a subset of employees" without providing details on the number and relationship of staff affected.
Microsoft employs about 7,000 engineers in its Asia-Pacific research and development team, with the bulk of that workforce based in China, the WSJ reports.
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The move comes amid US efforts to prevent China from developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology that could be used for military purposes. Over the past two years, the US has placed numerous restrictions on China, limiting its ability to buy advanced chips and chip-making equipment that can be developed to train artificial intelligence models.
Now, the Biden administration is trying to put new safeguards in place for the export of advanced AI models, such as the large language model that powers the ChatGPT , according to recent reports.
Currently, there is little government oversight preventing companies like Microsoft, one of the largest U.S. cloud computing and artificial intelligence companies, from selling or offering artificial intelligence modeling services to foreign entities.
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The US reportedly fears that artificial intelligence models, which mine vast amounts of data to create content, could be used for cyberattacks or to create biological weapons.
Source: cnbc
