China’s researchers go against Meta’s Terms of Use to develop AI tool for military purposes

PLA-linked Chinese research institutions have used the Llama model to develop an AI tool for use in military applications. Three academic papers have been published regarding this development, and they have been reviewed by Reuters in a new report. 

Six researchers from three Chinese institutions have elaborated the development of an AI tool that processes and gathers intelligence, and helps with operational decision-making. They call this tool, “ChatBIT,” which has been built by fine-tuning an earlier Llama 13B large language model (LLM).

The researchers mentioned that ChatBIT was “optimized for dialogue and question-answering tasks in the military field” and it managed to outperform several AI models that were almost as capable as ChatGPT-4. 

Meta has provisions in place that prevent the use of its AI models for military, warfare, and nuclear applications. However, since these models are public, the company cannot practically enforce these provisions.

Regarding China’s use of public AI models for military advancement, Sunny Cheung, an associate fellow at the Jamestown Foundation stated, “It’s the first time there has been substantial evidence that PLA military experts in China have been systematically researching and trying to leverage the power of open-source LLMs, especially those of Meta, for military purposes.”