Meta announced Monday that it would allow U.S. national security agencies and defense contractors to use its open source software. artificial intelligence model, Lama. The announcement came a few days later Reuters reported that an older version of Llama had been used by researchers to develop defense applications for the military wing of the Chinese government.
Meta’s policies generally prohibit the use of its large open source language model for “military, war, nuclear (and) espionage industries or applications.” The company makes an exception for U.S. agencies and contractors as well as similar national security agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to Bloomberg.
“These types of responsible and ethical uses of open source AI models like Llama will not only support American prosperity and security, but also help establish American open source standards in the global race for AI leadership. “AI,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, wrote in a blog post.
Among the government contractors that Meta opens Llama to are Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake.
The company highlighted the need to develop AI more advanced than China’s – a key talking point that many members of the US Congress bring up when discussing whether and how to regulate AI.
“In a world where national security is inextricably linked to economic production, innovation and job growth, widespread adoption of U.S. open source AI models serves both economic and security interests “, wrote Clegg. “Other countries – including China and other competitors of the United States – also understand this and are rushing to develop their own open source models, investing heavily to get ahead of the United States. »
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Two Chinese researchers associated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were able to access and use an older version of Llama to develop a chatbot that helped collect and process military intelligence, according to Reuters. The researcher’s use of Llama was “unauthorized,” according to a statement provided by Meta to Reuters.
U.S. regulators have repeatedly expressed a desire to get ahead of other countries, notably China, in developing the most advanced AI for national security reasons. Last week, the White House released its first memo on how the federal government plans to address AI national security. policy. Among the priorities listed by the White House was the need to “harness AI to achieve national security objectives” and accelerate the acquisition of AI capabilities from the private sector.
“Advancements on the AI frontier will have significant implications for national security and foreign policy in the near future,” the memo said.
The tech industry has long provided AI technologies to U.S. and international defense and national security agencies. In 2018, Google employees successfully opposed the company’s participation in a Pentagon project called Project Maven, which uses AI to better decipher drone videos. Tech workers protested these defense contracts more fervently last year, especially as many questioned their the employer’s work with the Israeli government. However, with the government’s growing demand for AI models, tech companies will likely be more motivated than ever to bid for these national security contracts.