ChatBIT: The New Frontier of Chinese Military AI

Chinese researchers linked to the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) They have developed an AI model called ChatBIT, designed for applications military using the open source model Flame of Meta. 🌐 According to Reuters, some of the researchers are associated with the Academy of Military Sciences (AMS), the main research group of the PLA. 📚

Three academic articles and several analysts have confirmed this information, highlighting that ChatBIT uses the Large Language Model (LLM) Call 13B of Meta. This LLM has been modified for the collection and prosecution intelligence, allowing military planners to use it for operational decision making. 🧠💡

According to one of the articles cited by Reuters, military AI is “optimized for military dialogue and question-answering tasks.” ChatBIT was also claimed to perform around 90% of the performance of the LLM GPT-4 from OpenAI, although the article did not indicate how its performance was tested or whether the AI model has been used in the field. 🤔🔍

However, its use of open-source AI models could allow it to match the latest models released by the giants. technological Americans in benchmark tests. 🏆 “This is the first time there is substantial evidence that PLA military experts in China have been systematically researching and attempting to harness the power of open-source LLMs, especially Meta ones, for military purposes,” he says Sunny Cheung, associate researcher at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington DC-based think tank that focuses on China's emerging and dual-use technologies, including artificial intelligence. 🚀🌍

The Meta license explicitly prohibits the use of Llama for applications military, but its open-source nature makes it nearly impossible to enforce such limits in reality. ❌🔓 However, Meta stated in a statement that this alleged use of the LLM Llama 13B, which it considers an “obsolete version” given that it is already training Llama 4, is largely irrelevant, especially given that China is investing trillions of dollars to gain an edge in AI technologies. 💰🤖

In addition, other researchers noted that ChatBIT It only used 100,000 military dialogue records, a pittance considering that the latest models are trained on trillions of data points. Some experts question the viability of such a small dataset for military AI training. However, ChatBIT could also just be a proof of concept, with the military research institutes involved planning to create more extensive models. 📈🔬

Furthermore, the Chinese government could have released these research papers as a signal to the US that it is not afraid to use AI to gain an advantage. technological on the global stage. 🌎⚔️

No matter how big or small this development is, Washington has been afraid of this news: the use of technologies open source software that will give their opponents a military advantage. Therefore, in addition to expanding the controls exports in China, many US lawmakers also want to block the country's access to open source/standardized technologies such as RISC-V. It is also taking steps to prevent US entities from investing in AI, semiconductors and quantum computing in China. 💼🔒

This is the double-edged sword that American policymakers must contend with. Naturally, they don't want to give access to advanced technologies to their opponents through open source avenues; however, open source technology is also a huge driver of technological advancement, and limiting it could put American companies at a disadvantage. 🤔⚖️