Ukraine develops an army of killing machines. Experts are worried
Ukrainian labs are developing an army of robots for war. The initiators hope to reduce human losses and protect wounded soldiers and civilians, writes The Independent. According to the cited source, defense startups across Ukraine — about 250 according to industry estimates — are creating the killing machines at secret locations that typically look like rural car repair shops.
Ukraine currently has semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI and the combination of low-cost weapons and artificial intelligence tools is worrying many experts who say low-cost drones will enable their proliferation.
"Cheaper drones will facilitate their proliferation," said Toby Walsh, a professor of AI at the University of New South Wales, Australia. "Their autonomy is also likely to increase."
A startup led by entrepreneur Andrei Denysenko can assemble an unmanned ground vehicle called the Odyssey in four days at a cost of about $35,000, or 10 percent of the cost of an imported model. The exact location of this startup is not disclosed to protect the infrastructure and the people who work there.
“We are fighting a huge country and they have no resource limits. We understand that we cannot afford to lose many human lives," Denysenko said.
The Odyssey prototype, an 800-kilogram land vehicle, can travel up to 30 kilometers on a single battery charge. It can be modified to carry a remote-controlled heavy machine gun or demining charges.
Denysenko and his team are also working on a motorized exoskeleton to augment a soldier's strength and transport vehicles for equipment. "We will do our best to develop unmanned technologies even faster. (The Russians) use their soldiers as cannon fodder, while we lose our best men,” Fedorov wrote in an online post.
Technology leaders to the United Nations and the Vatican worry that the use of drones and AI in weapons could reduce the barrier to killing and dramatically escalate conflicts.
Human Rights Watch and other international rights groups are calling for a ban on weapons that exclude human decision making, a concern echoed by the U.N. General Assembly, Elon Musk and the founders of the Google-owned, London-based startup DeepMind.
