According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta is "collaborating with the public sector to implement Llama throughout the US government."
Many significant issues are brought up by the remark, which he stated during his opening remarks during Meta's Q3 earnings call on Wednesday: Which government agencies will make use of Meta's AI models specifically? For what purposes will the AI be employed? Will Llama be used for any military-specific purposes? Does Meta receive compensation for any of this?
Beyond Zuckerberg's succinct statement to investors, Meta spokesperson Jon Carvill refused to respond when I asked him to elaborate.
The government is being pushed by the social media behemoth's AI at an intriguing moment. For starters, despite Zuckerberg's efforts to officially dissociate himself and Meta's products from politics, presidential candidate Donald Trump recently threatened to put the CEO in jail.
Additionally, Meta's competitors in the AI space are cosying up to the government. Recently, OpenAI and Anthropic announced that they would provide the US AI Safety Institute with their models in advance for safety review.
There is ample evidence of Google's sporadic involvement as a Pentagon AI vendor. OpenAI said in a recent blog post that the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and DARPA were using its models.
Zuckerberg hinted at the next Llama model on the Q3 earnings call, but we have yet to hear about Meta's AI collaboration with the government. When version four launches next year, he anticipates "new modalities," "stronger reasoning," and "much faster" performance.
He said it is training on "a cluster bigger than I've seen reported for anything else others are doing." He admitted that Meta intends to keep increasing its AI expenditures in 2025, which "may not be what investors want to hear in the near term." However, he believes the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
“I’m pretty amped about all the work we’re doing right now,” he said. “This may be the most dynamic moment I’ve seen in our industry, and I’m focused on making sure that we build some awesome things and make the most of the opportunities ahead.”
In terms of business, Meta is still expanding. For the third quarter, the company's sales were $40.5 billion, up 19% from the previous year, and its profit was $17.3 billion. Additionally, it reports that 3.29 billion people use at least one of its apps daily, up 5% from the previous year.
Source: The Verge