American tech company Meta, the creators of FaceBook, has announced its plans to share AI technologies with US government agencies and defense contractors. This includes Llama, Meta’s largest open-source large language model (LLM).
The news was confirmed on Monday, with the company stating in a blog post, “We are pleased to confirm that we are also making Llama available to U.S. government agencies, including those working on defense and national security applications and private sector partners supporting their work.”
Tech companies have supplied military and government agencies for many years. However, Meta usually maintained a policy prohibiting using its AI models for “military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, [and] espionage”. This time the company is making an exception for the US military. Meta justified this decision by stating, “wants to play its part to support the safety, security and economic prosperity of America – and of its closest allies too.”. These allies include agencies from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
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Meta will work with several government contractors such as Microsoft, Amazon, Accenture, IBM, Oracle, Anduril, Booz Allen, and many more. According to Meta, companies like Oracle and Microsoft are already using the Llama model to streamline complicated logistics and planning, track terrorist financing, or strengthen cyber defenses.
The news of Meta’s policy change comes after the US government issued a public memo on harnessing AI to achieve national security objectives. Consequently, many developers have protested the use of AI and associated technologies for military purposes. Due to the increasing demand for AI tools for government use, experts believe such contracts will become more common in the future.