Meta recently unveiled a strategic approach to handling the potential risks associated with powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The company's internal document outlines possible catastrophic outcomes that could emerge from releasing such systems. Although Meta acknowledges that the list is not exhaustive, these identified risks are considered the most urgent and plausible. In response, Meta plans to limit access to high-risk AI systems internally and withhold their release until effective mitigations reduce risks to moderate levels.
Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has pledged to make artificial general intelligence (AGI) openly available eventually. AGI is broadly defined as AI capable of performing any task a human can. However, the company remains cautious. Meta concedes that the science of evaluating AI risk is not "sufficiently robust" to provide definitive quantitative metrics for determining a system's riskiness.
Meta's family of AI models, known as Llama, has achieved hundreds of millions of downloads globally. While the open release approach has contributed to its widespread adoption, it has also introduced challenges. The models have few safeguards, making them susceptible to generating toxic and harmful outputs. Notably, Llama has already been exploited by at least one U.S. adversary to develop a defense chatbot.
The Frontier AI Framework introduced by Meta identifies two categories of AI systems deemed too risky for immediate release: "high risk" and "critical risk." High-risk systems are those that could lead to catastrophic outcomes that cannot be mitigated in the proposed deployment context. Critical-risk systems not only pose the same threat but also include the potential for exfiltration.
Examples of catastrophic outcomes cited by Meta include the "automated end-to-end compromise of a best-practice-protected corporate-scale environment" and the "proliferation of high-impact biological weapons." When a system is categorized as critical-risk, Meta will implement unspecified security measures to prevent exfiltration and halt development until the system's dangers can be sufficiently reduced.
Meta's open-access strategy contrasts sharply with competitors like OpenAI, which gate their systems behind an API, and Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which also adopts an open availability policy. Despite these differences, Meta emphasizes a balanced approach.
“We believe that by considering both benefits and risks in making decisions about how to develop and deploy advanced AI,”
“it is possible to deliver that technology to society in a way that preserves the benefits of that technology to society while also maintaining an appropriate level of risk.”
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