The Battle Over Open-Source AI Will Be Settled in Trump’s Presidency

Donald Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election has a lot of implications for AI. Some are clear: Trump has said he will repeal President Joe Biden’s AI executive order, which requires companies training large AI models to share information about them with the federal government. 

In another key area, though, Trump’s stance isn’t certain. That’s the hotly contested question of whether freely available, open-source AI such as Meta Platforms’ Llama models are a threat to national security. (For more on what a Trump presidency means for AI, check out Kate’s story here from earlier this week.)

The issue was put in the spotlight last Friday, when Reuters reported that Meta’s Llama models were being used by Chinese researchers to build AI tools for potential military applications. What made the report particularly problematic for Meta is that it had prohibited U.S. government agencies and contractors the ability to use Llama for military purposes, although on Tuesday, Meta published a blog post saying it had dropped that prohibition.

Allowing the U.S. military to use Llama might not be enough to mollify Meta’s critics on this issue. Trump is anti-China and has historically restricted exports of technology such as encryption software, drones and semiconductors. (The Biden Administration increased those restrictions on technology). It’s hard to imagine Trump would agree to let China gain access to state-of-the-art AI models.