Driven by the war with Russia, many Ukrainian companies are working on a major leap forward in the weaponization of consumer technology.
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A Ukrainian battalion testing a machine gun that can use A.I.-powered targeting, at a shooting range near Kyiv.Credit...Videos by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times and Paul Mozur/the New York Times
A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots
A Ukrainian battalion testing a machine gun that can use A.I.-powered targeting, at a shooting range near Kyiv.Credit...Videos by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times and Paul Mozur/the New York Times
By
Paul Mozur and
Adam Satariano
Paul Mozur reported from Kyiv, Lviv, Kramatorsk and near the front lines in the Donbas region, all in Ukraine. Adam Satariano reported from London.
In a field on the outskirts of Kyiv, the founders of Vyriy, a Ukrainian drone company, were recently at work on a weapon of the future.
To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s chief executive, hopped on his motorcycle and rode down a dirt path. Behind him, a drone followed, as a colleague tracked the movements from a briefcase-size computer.
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A test of a Vyriy drone system that uses autonomous tracking to fix onto a target, in a field outside Kyiv.CreditCredit...Video by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times
Until recently, a human would have piloted the quadcopter. No longer. Instead, after the drone locked onto its target — Mr. Babenko — it flew itself, guided by software that used the machine’s camera to track him.
The motorcycle’s growling engine was no match for the silent drone as it stalked Mr. Babenko. “Push, push more. Pedal to the metal, man,” his colleagues called out over a walkie-talkie as the drone swooped toward him. “You’re screwed, screwed!”
If the drone had been armed with explosives, and if his colleagues hadn’t disengaged the autonomous tracking, Mr. Babenko would have been a goner.
Vyriy is just one of many Ukrainian companies working on a major leap forward in the weaponization of consumer technology, driven by
the war with Russia. The pressure to outthink the enemy, along with huge flows of investment, donations and government contracts, has turned Ukraine into a Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weaponry.
What the companies are creating is technology that makes human judgment about targeting and firing increasingly tangential. The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-design software, powerful automation algorithms and specialized artificial intelligence microchips has pushed a deadly innovation race into uncharted territory, fueling a potential new era of killer robots.
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The drone tested by Vyriy, one of many Ukrainian companies driven by the war with Russia to work on the weaponization of consumer technology.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
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A Vyriy employee used goggles to see what the drone was seeing as it locked onto a target. Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
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 A.I. that uses large amounts of data to identify patterns and make decisions. Deep learning has helped generate popular large language models, like
OpenAI’s GPT-4, but it also helps make models interpret and respond in real time to video and camera footage. That means software that once helped a drone follow a snowboarder down a mountain can now become a deadly tool.
In more than a dozen interviews with Ukrainian entrepreneurs, engineers and military units, a picture emerged of a near future when swarms of self-guided drones can coordinate attacks and machine guns with computer vision can automatically shoot down soldiers. More outlandish creations, like a hovering unmanned copter that wields machine guns, are also being developed.
The weapons are cruder than the slick stuff of science-fiction blockbusters, like “The Terminator” and its T-1000 liquid-metal assassin, but they are a step toward such a future. While these weapons aren’t as advanced as expensive military-grade systems made by the United States, China and Russia, what makes the developments significant is their low cost — just thousands of dollars or less — and ready availability.
Except for the munitions, many of these weapons are built with code found online and components such as hobbyist computers, like
Raspberry Pi, that can be bought from Best Buy and a hardware store. Some U.S. officials said they worried that the abilities could soon be used to carry out terrorist attacks.
For Ukraine, the technologies could provide an edge against Russia, which is also developing autonomous killer gadgets — or simply help it keep pace. The systems raise the stakes in an international debate about the ethical and legal ramifications of A.I. on the battlefield. Human rights groups and United Nations officials want to limit the use of autonomous weapons for fear that they may trigger a new global arms race that could spiral out of control.
In Ukraine, such concerns are secondary to fighting off an invader.
“We need maximum automation,” said
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, who has led the country’s efforts to use tech start-ups to expand advanced fighting capabilities. “These technologies are fundamental to our victory.”
Autonomous drones like Vyriy’s have already been used in combat to hit Russian targets, according to Ukrainian officials and video verified by The New York Times. Mr. Fedorov said the government was working to fund drone companies to help them rapidly scale up production.
Major questions loom about what level of automation is acceptable. For now, the drones require a pilot to lock onto a target, keeping a “human in the loop” — a phrase often invoked by policymakers and A.I. ethicists. Ukrainian soldiers have raised concerns about the potential for malfunctioning autonomous drones to hit their own forces. In the future, constraints on such weapons may not exist.
Ukraine has “made the logic brutally clear of why autonomous weapons have advantages,” said Stuart Russell, an A.I. scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has warned about the dangers of weaponized A.I. “There will be weapons of mass destruction that are cheap, scalable and easily available in arms markets all over the world.”
A Drone Silicon Valley
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A soldier in northeastern Ukraine used zip ties to attach explosives to a drone for a strike mission on a Russian target.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
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A drone armed with a warhead, to be used along the front line in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times
In a ramshackle workshop in an apartment building in eastern Ukraine, Dev, a 28-year-old soldier in the 92nd Assault Brigade, has helped push innovations that turned cheap drones into weapons. First, he strapped bombs to racing drones, then added larger batteries to help them fly farther and recently incorporated night vision so the machines can hunt in the dark.
In May, he was one of the first to use autonomous drones, including those from Vyriy. While some required improvements, Dev said, he believed that they would be the next big technological jump to hit the front lines.
Autonomous drones are “already in high demand,” he said. The machines have been especially helpful against
jamming that can break communications links between drone and pilot. With the drone flying itself, a pilot can simply lock onto a target and let the device do the rest.
Makeshift factories and labs have sprung up across Ukraine to build remote-controlled machines of all sizes, from long-range aircraft and attack boats to cheap kamikaze drones — abbreviated as F.P.V.s, for first-person view, because they are guided by a pilot wearing virtual-reality-like goggles that give a view from the drone. Many are precursors to machines that will eventually act on their own.
