Many Ukrainian companies are 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…
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… [end quote]
This is a long article with lots of photos and video of the new weapons. Discussions of future developments and possible ethical controls.
What struck me right off the bat is that swarms of AI-equipped drones are very difficult to defend against. They are an inexpensive threat to very expensive conventional weapons systems.
Our military-industrial complex had better pivot on a dime to address this technology or the next war will turn our military into the Maginot Line.
Wendy
I think we will have lasers that blast tiny bots out of the air in huge numbers. I doubt we will be caught flatfooted.
I think no matter how many Russian soldiers are put in the field almost all of them will be killed.
I think our resources are developing these systems directly. The report might call it as Ukrainian homegrown but it in truth is not.
I do not “like” this but I do not care at all how many Russian men die in Ukraine. A pox on all of them. The ejits need to get rid of Putin not take over Ukraine.
I get the Russians have their own propaganda and mythology. I do not give a rat’s. It is garbage-minded crapola.
My family has felt the stupidity as a body count.
This is a modern period. What Catherine the Great did has nothing to do with any reality today no matter how fouled up Putin’s mind is. His reading list is one of the great lines of crap ever found.
AI and weapons/defense is likely to get so advanced that we will have what some call The Project, to develop and protect AI in the name of national security. And it could happen within a few years. The attached article talks quite a bit about this. It is very long, but the author has street cred in this area. I don’t agree with his timelines necessarily but do agree with many of his conclusions, especially with regards to defense and national security implications.
Killer robots are scary, but not as scary as a misinformed citizenry leading its country into a Leave the World Behind hell-scape.
Weaponizing misinformation with AI -
Without support from the west, Ukraine has no chance. Support is being undermined more and more each day. It doesn’t seem like we’re paying much attention.
The macroeconomic impacts of our current situation are very real, and very dire.
And people wonder why those like myself have claimed TFG was a Russian asset…
Misinformation is indeed a very real problem. It was a problem back in the day of AM talk radio, but it’s supercharged today. And that is not a good thing. A friend of mine told me a decade ago that Russia had a plan to defeat us w/o using the military, and this is exactly what he meant.
