Meta’s open large language model family, Llama, isn’t “open-source” in a traditional sense, but it’s freely available to download and build on—and national defense agencies are among those putting it to use.
A recent Reuters report detailed Chinese researchers fine-tuned Llama’s model on military records to create a tool for analyzing military intelligence. Meta’s director of public policy called the use “unauthorized.” But three days later, Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of public affairs, announced that Meta will allow use of Llama for U.S. nation security.
“It shows that a lot of the guardrails that are put around these models are fluid,” said Ben Brooks, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Meta isn’t alone in rush to support U.S. defense
The Reuters investigation found that researchers from China’s Academy of Military Science used the 13 billion parameter version of Meta’s Llama large language model to develop ChatBIT, an AI tool for military intelligence analysis and decision-making. It’s the first clear evidence of the People’s Liberation Army adapting open-source AI models for defense purposes.
Meta told Reuters that ChatBIT violated the company’s acceptable use policy, which prohibits use of Llama for (among other things) military, warfare, espionage, and nuclear industries or applications. Three days later, however, Clegg touted Meta’s support of the U.S. defense industry.
It was an odd turn of events, as use of Llama by any military would seem to violate Llama’s acceptable use policy. While Meta has no way to enforce its policy—its models don’t require authorization or authentication for use—the company’s stance on military use had, up until now, remained against it.
That’s still true today, but only for militaries outside the U.S. A Meta spokesperson told IEEE Spectrum that Llama’s terms haven’t changed; instead, the company is “waiving the military use policy for the U.S. government and the companies supporting their work.”
Meta isn’t alone in finding a sudden need to support U.S. defense. Anthropic’s Claude 3 and Claude 3.5 models will be used by defense contractor Palantir to sift through secret government data. OpenAI, meanwhile, recently hired former Palantir CISO Dane Stuckey and appointed retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone to its board of directors.
“All the [major AI companies] are eagerly showing their commitment to U.S. national security, so there’s nothing surprising about Meta’s response. And I think it would’ve been a curious outcome if open AI models were available to potential adversaries while [domestically] having strict national security or defense restrictions,” says Brooks.
What’s next for AI, defense, and regulation?
While Meta’s decision to make Llama available to the U.S. government could help approved military contractors adopt it, it doesn’t put the open AI genie back in the model. As the…
Read full article: Meta Opens Its AI Model for the U.S. Military
The post “Meta Opens Its AI Model for the U.S. Military” by Matthew S. Smith was published on 11/17/2024 by spectrum.ieee.org