Facebook and Instagram parent Meta will allow its artificial intelligence (AI) models to be used for military purposes, the company said on Monday (Nov 4), adding that government agencies and contractors working on national security will get hold of the latest Llama 3 model. The Mark Zuckerberg-owned social media company said it was playing its part in ensuring the safety and security of the United States by working with the likes of Lockheed Martin, IBM, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle among others to make Llama available to the government.
"As an American company, and one that owes its success in no small part to the entrepreneurial spirit and democratic values the United States upholds, Meta wants to play its part to support the safety, security and economic prosperity of America - and of its closest allies too," the company said.
With the collaboration, the US military intends to use the power of AI to streamline logistics and track terrorist financing as well as strengthen cyber defence.
Under Meta's "acceptable use policy", people are not allowed to use the AI model for military, nuclear industries or espionage. However, Nick Clegg, Meta's president of global affairs, said the company now backed "responsible and ethical uses" of the technology that supported the US and its 'democratic values'.
Also read | Meta Unveils Biggest Llama 3 AI Model, Claiming Language And Math Gains
OpenAI cosying up with the US government
Meta is not the only company to have offered its AI model to the US military. For a long time, there have been rumours that OpenAI, the world's largest AI company, was cosying up with the Pentagon. A report in Forbes claimed that OpenAI's national security advisor Katrina Mulligan recently attended a Taylor Swift concert in New Orleans with the Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. The 'meeting' came in the backdrop of US Africa Command, or AFRICOM, in a procurement document stating that access to OpenAI's technology was "essential" for its mission.
However, there are legitimate concerns regarding AI models being utilised by the military. Last week, a Reuters report claimed that Chinese military researchers had used MetaAI to develop a defence chatbot. The Chinese researchers, associated with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) R&D group, used Meta's Llama 2 AI model to create a military-focused chatbot called ChatBIT.
Quizzed about the incident, Meta released a statement remarking that the use of the "single, and outdated" Llama model was "unauthorised" and contrary to its acceptable use policy.
