Meta gives US government its powerful AI after China took it and weaponized it

Meta has seemingly responded to the recent reports that top Chinese institutions linked to China's government have taken Meta's publicly available Llama model for military purposes by granting US government agencies access for defense purposes.

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The announcement from Meta came after a report from Reuters claimed six researchers from three Chinese institutions, including two under the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) leading research body, used an early version of Meta's powerful AI model called Llama. The report claimed Meta's AI model was used by the researchers as a base for what is called "ChatBIT," and that this AI model was "optimised for dialogue and question-answering tasks in the military field," according to a paper reviewed by Reuters.

Notably, Meta's Llama model is open-source, meaning it is publicly available. However, Meta prohibits the use of any of its Llama models for military purposes, and, under its own guidelines, lists the following prohibited use cases for its AI models - "military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, espionage". These guidelines fall in line with the push from the US government not to fall behind in the race to develop the most sophisticated AI model, as providing adversial countries with the tools to develop more sophisticated systems would jeopardize the US's substantial lead in the space.

Now, Meta has announced that its enabling US government agencies and contractors working on national security applications to its Llama models. Meta wrote in its announcement that its partnering with companies such as Accenture Federal Services, Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake to bring Llama models to government agencies.

Due to their ability to process vast amounts of data, reason, and generate usable insights, large language models can support many aspects of America's safety and national security. They can help to streamline complicated logistics and planning, track terrorist financing or strengthen our cyber defenses. For decades, open source systems have been critical to helping the United States build the most technologically advanced military in the world and, in partnership with its allies, develop global standards for new technology. Open source systems have helped to accelerate defense research and high-end computing, identify security vulnerabilities and improve communication between disparate systems.

In a world where national security is inextricably linked with economic output, innovation and job growth, widespread adoption of American open source AI models serves both economic and security interests. Other nations - including China and other competitors of the United States - understand this as well, and are racing to develop their own open source models, investing heavily to leap ahead of the U.S.

We believe it is in both America and the wider democratic world's interest for American open source models to excel and succeed over models from China and elsewhere. As open source models become more capable and more widely adopted, a global open source standard for AI models is likely to emerge, as it has with technologies like Linux and Android. This will happen whether the United States engages or not. This standard will form the foundation for AI development around the world and become embedded in technology, infrastructure and manufacturing, and global finance and e-commerce

- wrote Meta