Meta recently announced that it will be allowing its Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to provide support for US defense and military purposes. The company stated that the agencies and contractors will be able to use the latest Llama 3 large language models for the security and economic purposes of the country.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta stated that the company owes its success to the larger democratic values and the entrepreneurial spirit of the United States thereby Meta wants to contribute something from their part towards the security and economic prosperity of the country.
The Llama models are open source and can be freely copied and distributed by any developers and companies. According to the accepted use policy, the general citizens are forbidden from using the technologies for any military or nuclear projects. Meta will be providing a dozen of the Llama models to the US agencies and contractors which include Palantir Technologies, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Lockheed Martin Corporations,
The US military and defense agencies will be supposedly using the AI models to further enhance and strengthen cyberspace by streamlining logistics and tracking down terrorist financing. The AI models are expected to provide greater help to the US military as they are designed using advanced technologies.
As stated by a spokesperson from Meta, the company will be making the Llama 3 model available to similar military agencies and contractors from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These nations reportedly share an intelligence-sharing partnership known as Five Eyes with the United States. Reports have also shown that Israel, one of the closest connections of the United States from the Middle East region was not included in the list.
Meta has taken great initiative in allowing its AI technologies to provide support to the US military. This decision was taken on the eve of the most crucial election situation in the United States. It is revealed that the latest decision by Meta stems from concerns about China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recently employing Meta’s AI model Llama 13B for the country’s military applications despite Meta’s accepted use policies.
Nick Clegg, Meta’s President stated that considering the rapid growth of AI technologies in today’s world, the Llama 3 AI model will be essential for data analysis and synthesizing documents that will further enhance the cyber defense of the country.
As the company has confirmed to offer service to other countries as well, Meta spokesperson declared that the company will not be further responsible for the manner in which each country will be employing the Llama technology. Therefore countries should responsibly and ethically use the technology for the required purpose adhering to the concerning laws and regulations.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has always remained in praise for the uprise of the AI technologies considering the greater opportunities they offered to the technological community. Zuckerberg earlier stated that making AI models widely accessible to society will indeed help it be more advanced.
The decision to offer the company’s latest AI models was taken for the enhancement of the security and economic prospects of the United States. This offer is also said to leverage Meta’s AI models to a greater extent. Reports show that Mark Zuckerberg has decided to make the Llama 3 model an open source to establish control over the next major technological wave that will only work if their technologies become widespread around the world.
This can also be considered a major comeback of the company despite the various criticisms Meta has faced in recent times. As expressed by Clegg, the main goal of Meta is focused on placing American open-source AI models on top of all the other models from China and other countries.
