Military experts are warning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could spark Terminator–style wars between AI weapons systems.
The conflict is the first large-scale war to see widespread use of drones on both sides for spying and attacks, but anti-weapons campaigners are branding their use a slippery slope to all-out battles between machines.
Wim Zwijnenburg, project leader in humanitarian disarmament at PAX, a Dutch organization that campaigns to end armed violence, told Wired magazine in an article published Friday (24.02.23): “The massive use of drones in the war in Ukraine is pushing for more AI-guided weapon systems.
“Justification for defensive purposes can easily change into offensive use when the genie is out of the bottle.”
Mr Zwijnenburg added the massive amount of drones in action along the front line is pushing militaries toward relying more and more on automated battles.
He said: “We are really concerned this can be used to justify rapid deployment of artificial intelligence in weapon systems.
Wired highlighted there are no publicly agreed-upon rules about the use of autonomous weapons that can find and attack their own targets, and said “even though a UN-convened group of experts agreed on a set of principles around lethal autonomous weapons in 2019, these are not legally binding”.
Mr Zwijnenburg said: “One of the stupid pitches I hear from the defense industry is that robots wouldn’t torture a human being, or robots can’t rape. “But that totally depends on who’s doing the programming.”
Russian forces started the invasion of Ukraine using Orlan-10 fixed-wing drones to monitor soldiers’ movements and assess damage, while Ukrainian forces deployed the Bayraktar TB2 for largely the same purposes.
But both sides have now modified them to carry weapons – like ISIS has done in Iraq – with Ukraine running drone war schools.
They are now capable of dropping grenades and have 3D-printing parts that turn them from surveillance devices into weapons.
Despite warnings against their use, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, has described the development of autonomous drones as “logical and inevitable”.
He said on Twitter: “We will do everything to make unmanned technologies develop even faster.”
But Ukrainian drone mechanic Sergiy Sotnychenko told Wired: “For me, drones are now the birds bringing death.”
