Ukraine eyes AI as weapon against Russia, ushering in era of killer robots

kyiv: In a field on the outskirts of kyiv, the founders of Vyriy, a Ukrainian drone company, were recently working on a weapon of the future. To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s CEO, jumped on his motorcycle and headed down a dirt road. Behind him, a drone followed him, while a colleague tracked his movements using a computer the size of a briefcase. Until recently, a human would have piloted the quadcopter. Not anymore. Instead, after locking on to its target—Babenko—the drone flew on its own, guided by software that used the machine’s camera to track it. The motorcycle’s roaring engine was no match for the silent drone that stalked Babenko. If the drone had been armed with explosives and his colleagues hadn’t disabled autonomous tracking, Babenko would have been screwed.
Vyriy is just one of many Ukrainian companies working toward a major leap forward in the weaponization of consumer technology, driven by the war with Russia. The pressure to outdo the enemy, along with massive flows of investment, donations, and government contracts, has transformed Ukraine in a Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weapons. Companies are creating technology that makes human judgment about targeting and firing increasingly tangential. The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-build software, powerful automation algorithms, and specialized artificial intelligence microchips has propelled a deadly innovation race into uncharted territory, fueling a potential new era of killer robots.
The most advanced versions of the technology that allows drones and other machines to act autonomously have been made possible by deep learning, a form of AI that uses large amounts of data to identify patterns and make decisions. Deep learning has enabled the generation of popular language models at scale, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, but it also allows models to interpret and respond to video footage and cameras in real time. That means software that once allowed a drone to follow a snowboarder down a mountain can now become a deadly tool.
In a dozen interviews with Ukrainian entrepreneurs, engineers and military units, a picture of a near future emerged, in which swarms of self-guided drones could coordinate their attacks and machine guns with artificial vision could automatically shoot down soldiers. More outlandish creations, such as an unmanned hovering helicopter that wields machine guns, are also under development.
For Ukraine, these technologies could be an advantage against Russia, which is also developing autonomous killer gadgets. The systems are fueling an international debate over the ethical and legal ramifications of AI on the battlefield. Human rights groups and U.N. officials want to limit its use for fear it could spark a new global arms race that could spiral out of control. In Ukraine, those concerns are secondary to fighting an invader. “We need maximum automation,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation who has led Ukraine’s efforts to use tech startups to expand advanced combat capabilities. “These technologies are fundamental to our victory.” NYT