For years, technologists have debated whether it is better for companies to keep the details of their computer code secret or share it with software developers around the world.

That debate — closed versus open source — has become inflamed by the rapid development of artificial intelligence and worries that A.I. is quickly becoming a national security issue.

In an open letter on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, reinforced what some said was a risky stance taken by his company: that open source development of artificial intelligence would allow technologists to learn how powerful A.I. models are created and use that knowledge to build their own A.I. programs.

Mr. Zuckerberg said it was unrealistic to think that a handful of companies could keep their A.I. technology secret, particularly when Silicon Valley has for years been a target for espionage by countries such as China.

“I think governments will conclude it’s in their interest to support open source because it will make the world more prosperous and safer,” he said in the letter, adding that clamping down on sharing A.I. research would simply stifle American innovation.

Meta also released the latest and most powerful version of its A.I. algorithm, called LLaMA, and added support for seven additional languages — including Hindi, French and Spanish — for Meta AI, the company’s A.I.-powered smart assistant.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s renewed call for an embrace of open source tech comes as the Biden administration weighs how regulators should react to A.I. Last year, President Biden issued a sweeping executive order that called for more safeguards around the technology, including ways to combat the proliferation of misinformation that A.I.-powered chatbots and video programs were capable of spreading.

In April, the Commerce Department asked for feedback on a series of draft proposals on how to reckon with artificial intelligence.

Companies like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google have maintained that A.I. could be dangerous and was developing so quickly that it should be tightly held by the technologists who understand it best. Critics have also said that A.I. software developed in the United States could be used by countries like China in order to compete with or potentially harm Americans.

Others, like Mr. Zuckerberg and executives at smaller start-ups like Hugging Face, believe that the more people who have eyes on the development of the software, the easier it will be to spot problems.

“Open source will ensure that more people around the world have access to the benefits and opportunities of A.I., that power isn’t concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies, and that the technology can be deployed more evenly and safely across society,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s motives aren’t just altruistic, he admits. The more technologists use Meta’s services, the more its own products are standardized across the industry. And Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to have to go through the products of other companies — mainly Apple and Google — to reach his customers, as he has been forced to do for years.

“We must ensure that we always have access to the best technology, and that we’re not locking into a competitor’s closed ecosystem where they can restrict what we build,” he added in the letter.