Russian forces have been operating autonomous killer drones in Ukraine that choose and strike targets using artificial intelligence without human command, and one such drone attack, carried out by a drone reportedly fitted with an Nvidia chip, is said to have killed two civilians.
The New York Times reported on the 24th, local time, citing the Ukrainian military and drone and digital forensics experts, that this was confirmed after a drone that struck a propane tank facility at a gas station in Zaporizhzhia, in southeastern Ukraine, last month was taken apart and analyzed.
The drone recovered by Ukraine had no antenna to communicate with the ground. Instead, it carried Nvidia's tiny computer, the Jetson Orin, to identify targets on its own. Ukrainian authorities said an analysis of the unencrypted chip found stored terrain images used to track targets and stay on course, along with signs that it had been pre-trained to recognize and attack specific facilities such as propane tanks.
Nvidia said of the Jetson Orin found in the drone that it is a consumer product sold for various uses to students, developers and startups. The company said the Jetson Orin is not currently exported directly to Russia and may have entered the country through third-party resale channels.
Ukraine believes the drone flew to a roughly designated set of coordinates set in advance, after which the AI carried out target selection and the strike on its own. Two civilians were killed in the explosion.
AI is already common in existing military drones, but until now humans designated the attack targets and the AI played only a supporting role at the actual strike stage. The autonomous killer drone confirmed this time differs in that the AI handles the target selection itself. Because of this, it is hard to predict what the AI will attack in combat, and experts point to a high risk of civilian casualties, as in this case. This is also why human rights groups, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), have opposed the use of AI weapons without human involvement.
Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said it is the clearest evidence yet that Russia is experimenting with autonomous AI, and the first confirmed case of a civilian death caused by a Russian-made AI drone.
Colonel Serhii Minaiev, the air defense commander in Zaporizhzhia, warned that Russia's drone is a threat to the entire world. He said the world could soon face a situation like the movie "The Terminator," and that at this very moment machines are deciding whether to attack.
In response to such AI drones, Ukraine has deployed pilots for interceptor drones and installed anti-drone nets along about 385 kilometers of city streets and surrounding roads. It is also using camouflage tactics to disrupt AI image recognition, such as covering facilities likely to become targets, like propane tanks, with tarps.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the former Ukrainian defense minister who was dismissed last month, said in a recent media interview that Ukraine had also tested fully autonomous AI systems in Russian-occupied areas such as Crimea.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, marking its 35th Independence Day the same day, also showed off its unmanned forces in a military parade. The Ukrainian presidential office released footage of unmanned combat robots (left) marching along Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv and unmanned boats cutting through the water on the Dnipro River. Unlike traditional military parades, this one was notable for featuring a large number of unmanned systems.
