Recently, reports claimed that Chinese researchers used Meta’s publicly available Llama to develop an AI model for military applications. A paper reviewed by Reuters detailed how they had used an early version of Llama as a base for the AI tool, called “ChatBIT”.
Now, Meta has announced the use of its Llama AI to U.S. government agencies and allied national security agencies. The announcement now changed Meta’s policy of not using its open-source large language model (LLM) for military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, and espionage.
According to reports, the company has made an exception for US agencies and contractors as well as national security agencies in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
In a blog post, Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs at Meta, wrote, “These kinds of responsible and ethical uses of open source AI models like Llama will not only support the prosperity and security of the United States, they will also help establish U.S. open source standards in the global race for AI leadership.”
“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.,” Clegg wrote.
Among the government agencies and contractors, Meta is partnering with companies such as Amazon Web Services, Anduril, Accenture Federal Services, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, IBM, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, Scale AI and Snowflake to bring Llama to government agencies.
According to the blog post, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure use Llama to support governments by hosting Meta’s models on their secure cloud solutions for sensitive data. IBM’s watsonx solution is bringing Llama to national security agencies in their self-managed data centers and clouds.
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