According to Cointelegraph, Meta said that sharing open source AI technology with the United States and its allies will help maintain its "technological advantage" over China and other competitors.
Social media and technology company Meta has opened up its artificial intelligence model, Llama, to the U.S. military and defense contractors for national security purposes.
Llama will be used to simplify complex logistics and planning, track terrorist financing, and strengthen U.S. cyber defenses, Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote in a Nov. 4 statement.
The company will work with Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Palantir and other tech giants to provide comprehensive services to the US government.
Mark Zuckerberg's company stressed the importance of the US and its allies continuing to advocate for open-source technology to maintain their "technological edge" against China and other rivals.
"Open source systems are critical to helping the United States build the most advanced military in the world and work with its allies."
Clegg noted that open source systems have helped accelerate defense research and high-end computing, identify security vulnerabilities and improve communications.
“This benefits the public sector, fostering discoveries and breakthroughs, increasing efficiencies and improving the delivery of public services.”
Clegg said the US private sector would also benefit greatly because national security and economic output are "inextricably linked".
“Other countries — including China and other U.S. competitors — understand this and are stepping up efforts to develop their own open-source models, investing heavily in an effort to surpass the U.S.”
The news comes days after Reuters reported that a Chinese research institute associated with the People's Liberation Army had used an early version of Meta's Llama to build its AI military tools to collect and process intelligence, citing a report it obtained.
In response, a Meta executive said the PLA’s apparent use of Llama was “unauthorized” and violated Meta’s acceptable use policy.
Under the new multi-company partnership, Oracle will synthesize aircraft maintenance documentation based on Llama, allowing technicians to diagnose problems more efficiently – speeding up repair times and returning aircraft to service.
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure will host Llama on their cloud solutions to protect sensitive data.
Aerospace company Lockheed Martin has incorporated Llama into its “AI factory” for processing and conducting data analysis, while Scale AI is “fine-tuning” Llama to support specific defense tasks, such as planning operations and identifying adversary vulnerabilities.
Accenture, Anduril, Booz Allen, Databricks, Deloitte, Leidos and Snowflake also participated.
