Russia increasingly looks toward artificial intelligence (AI) to address deficiencies in its battlefield capabilities and capacities that the invasion of Ukraine has exposed, according to experts.
“Russian futurists, Russian technologists, Russian developers are envisioning this slow evolution away from larger human involvement to where humans are going to be involved as little as possible,” Samuel Bendett, adjunct senior fellow in the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), told Fox News Digital.
“Some of those statements were made prior to Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s conduct in this war, which is very much manpower intensive… but this is something that the Russian military is keeping sort of on the horizon,” he said.
Bendett in his paper for CNAS argued that Russia’s keenness to adopt AI could lead the country to take greater risks as it seeks to catch up with the West. He relied on public statements, announcements and analysis of Russian-language media to develop his paper, which looks at major developments in robotics and AI spaces and as Russia seeks an “intellectualized” military that makes semiautomated decisions.
Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital that AI remains one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “top priorities,” with annual reports on progress in development and implementation.
“Putin once stated that the nation that controls AI will control the world,” Koffler said. “His concern is that if the West leads in AI, Western values and concepts will be embedded in it and not Russia’s values.”
“Putin believes that Russia will lose sovereignty if it loses competition in AI,” she added. “Putin once compared AI with nuclear weapons, and he estimates that AI will follow the trajectory of nuclear weapons development – once people realize what enormous danger AI represents if it is not managed properly, there will be attempts to control it.”
Koffler claimed that Putin has indirectly acknowledged the U.S. as the frontrunner on AI development, citing Elon Musk’s Neuralink as proof that the billionaire will “do what he thinks must be done” to advance technology.
Bendett and Koffler both lamented the difficulty in fully assessing Russia’s progress with AI due to the lack of “trustworthy intelligence” and the overreliance on statements from the Russian government, which Koffler warned are often “exaggerations…..Discover More
Leave a Reply