On July 6 in Zaporozhzhia, a drone with no connection to its original operator determined targets on its own and delivered a lethal payload, killing three civilians. The incident may be the first case of Russia deploying a drone that could target and detonate based entirely on determinations made by an onboard AI. 

Russia has crossed this threshold in autonomous weaponry despite its position as a laggard in frontier models. By investing heavily in more narrow use cases than the generalized models that dominate headlines, Russia is carving out a niche as a leader in applying machine learning to acts of war.

Putin understood early on the importance of artificial intelligence, declaring in 2017 that “whoever leads in AI will rule the world.” He poured billions into the development of Russian AI, built partnerships between state institutions and tech firms and hosted international conferences. 

But Russia’s foreign policy undermined the drive for AI leadership at every turn. The invasion of Crimea cut Russian academics off from the international community just as the AI revolution was beginning, and the full-scale invasion sent tech talent fleeing months before the launch of ChatGPT-3 set off the chatbot boom. Russia never came close to China or the United States in its ability to release the powerful language models that have become nearly synonymous with AI, with firms like Yandex relying........

© The Moscow Times