Yeah, I’m still not sure how I feel about Meta supporting the U.S. military in its various projects, which includes using Meta’s Llama AI models to assist in mission planning, and other lethal-type activities.
Last year, Meta announced that it was working with the U.S. Army on various AI use cases, including:
“Fine-tuning Llama to support specific national security team missions, such as planning operations and identifying adversaries’ vulnerabilities.”
Which sounds concerning, right? I mean, AI tools still regularly make simple mistakes, and confuse contexts and/or meanings in basic usage. But Meta’s looking to work with the military to use AI to identify targets in combat.
Seems like a concern, while Meta is also working with Anduril to develop VR and XR helmets for military use, further engraining Meta technologies into the broader war machine.
I don’t know, it just feels like we’ve gone from “Facebook is a dangerous vector for foreign manipulation” to “let’s use Facebook to power our army” a little too fast.
And now, that usage is expanding to more foreign military uses.
Today, Meta has announced that it’s now made its Llama models available for national security use cases among U.S. security partners, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K., as well as their private sector suppliers, and it’s also further expanding that same access to more regions.
As per Meta:
“We are now expanding this access to a number of key U.S. democratic allies in Europe and Asia: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea, as well as NATO and European Union institutions.”
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that the military are going to be loading up Meta’s AI chatbot and asking “who should we kill next?” Instead, the focus here is on enabling foreign military groups to utilize Meta’s AI tools to build their own solutions.
“Llama has been used to help develop advanced AI tools for the U.S. military and national security agencies, enhancing decision-making, mission-specific capabilities, and operational efficiency. For example, Meta is working with the Army’s Combined Arms Support Command on a pilot project to demonstrate how AI and technologies like augmented and virtual reality can help to speed routine repairs and help the Army get equipment back into the field more quickly.”
So, in the majority, this will see Meta’s AI tools used for training and simulations, not for mission planning and live combat. But again, that could be a part of an expanded use case for these tools.
Which feels like a concern, but such usage is relative to how each group utilizes these tools, and Meta’s largely taking a hands-off approach in this respect.
“In a world where geopolitical power and national security are deeply intertwined with economic output, innovation, and growth, the widespread adoption of open source models like Llama will be essential to maintaining US and allied AI leadership and ensuring our shared values underpin the systems and standards adopted elsewhere. This is recognized by the U.S. government in its AI Action Plan for America, which Meta endorses.”
So Meta’s essentially looking to democratize the use of AI tools to ensure greater capacity among all allied nations. While also strengthening its own position as a key provider of such, which will solidify Meta’s AI business plan, and ensure ongoing investment and growth.
From that perspective, it’s a smart business move, but it just feels not quite right to have a company that was under fire, just a few years back, for facilitating foreign election interference, now overseeing direct connection with the global military machine.
But Meta wants to be the leader in AI development, and all industries are looking at how they can use technologies like this to gain an advantage.
