Machines That Choose Their Victims: The Dawn of Fully Autonomous Killer Drones
- On July 6, an autonomous Russian drone killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia: 19-year-old Tetiana Bubynets, 41-year-old Oleksiy Svirin, and 48-year-old Roman Karpiy, according to a New York Times investigation.
- Investigators discovered an unencrypted Nvidia Jetson Orin minicomputer inside the wreckage that made the drone's final targeting decision autonomously, removing human operators from selecting the exact strike point.
- Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center, identified this as the first documented case of civilian deaths from a Russian drone using self-targeting AI, trained to recognize propane tanks.
- Rights groups and the International Red Cross oppose autonomous weapons, warning they complicate accountability; Russian authorities have not publicly acknowledged the incident, while Nvidia stated its products are not designed for military purposes.
- Ukraine has also tested self-targeting systems in Russian-occupied Crimea, though former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov reported no civilian casualties, as both nations treat the battlefield as a real-time testing ground for autonomous warfare.
63 Articles
63 Articles
In July, three civilians were killed in southeastern Ukraine when a Russian drone exploded. The drone was completely controlled by AI, drone experts and the Ukrainian military told The New York Times. “In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie,” warns Colonel Serhiy Minayev.
The drone, who killed three Ukrainians at Saporishhya in July, had decided its own course of action. Will the machines soon hunt for people all alone?
AI Killer Drones Are 'Making Decisions to Strike': Russia Just Used One And 3 Ukrainian Civilians Died
A Russian attack drone using AI to select its target has killed three civilians in Ukraine, in what experts describe could be the first documented case of a Russian self-targeting drone causing civilian deaths. The 6 July strike in Zaporizhzhia has intensified fears over machines autonomously making life-or-death targeting decisions. The victims were 19-year-old university student Tetiana Bubynets, 41-year-old Oleksiy Svirin, and 48-year-old Rom…
The devices can select the final target without the intervention of a human operator; one of them killed three civilians in Zaporiyia, in what would be the first documented case of civilian casualties caused by a Russian drone with this level of autonomy
A Russian drone chose its own target and killed three. The code that told it what to look for was readable
Ukrainian investigators recovered an unencrypted American AI module from a Russian Molniya drone that killed three civilians near a Zaporizhzhia gas station on 6 July, and read the code that guided its targeting, the New York Times reported. No human operator made the final call. Commercially sold AI boards have been turning up inside Russian strike weapons for more than a year, and autonomy is the direction both armies are moving in. What chang…
The drone was guided to its target with the help of American Nvidia, NYT writes.
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