Is Ukraine the First "AI War"?

0:00Today on the AI Breakdown, we're asking whether Ukraine is the first AI war. The AI Breakdown is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. Go to breakdown.network for more information about our YouTube channel, our newsletter, and our Discord.

0:24Welcome back to the AI Breakdown. One of the things that makes artificial intelligence right now so fascinating for me is the way that it is happening at the smallest levels in terms of our daily lives in how we work and how we play, how we tell stories to our kids, and also on the highest levels of societal self-conception questions, politics, and conflict. Time this week published a fascinating piece called How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab. It's a 21-minute read, and so I'm certainly not going to read all of it. But the story starts with an anecdote at the beginning of June when Alex Karp, who is of course the CEO of Palantir Technologies, crossed the border between Poland and Ukraine on foot and was sped away to eventually be escorted into the bunker of the presidential palace, making him at the time the first leader of a major Western company to meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky since Russia had invaded three months earlier.

1:15Writes Time, over a round of espressos, Karp told Zelensky that he was ready to open an office in Kiev and deploy Palantir's data and artificial intelligence software to support Ukraine's defense. Karp believed they could team up in, quote, ways that allow David to beat a modern-day Goliath. Time continues, the Ukrainians weren't sure what to think of a man making grandiose promises, but they were familiar with the company's reputation. Said Jacob Hellberg, a national security expert, they are the AI arms dealers of the 21st century. In Ukraine, Karp told Time, he saw the opportunity to fulfill Palantir's mission to, quote, defend the West and to, quote, scare the F out of our enemies.

1:52Now, a year and a half later, Palantir is incredibly integrated across Ukrainian agencies. More than half a dozen, including the Ministry of Defense, the economy and education, are using Palantir software to do things like analyze satellite imagery, drone footage and reports from the ground, to do everything from make military decisions to collect evidence of war crimes to clearing landmines, resettling refugees and more. Now the argument of the piece is summed up by former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who told reporters last year that the collaboration between the Ukrainian armed forces and military AI companies represents, quote, the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history.

2:32Time writes, it can be hard to see that from afar. By all accounts, the war in Ukraine has settled into a stalemate, with both sides hammering away with 20th century weapons like artillery and tanks. Some view the claims of high-tech breakthroughs with skepticism, arguing that the grinding war of attrition is little affected by the deployment of AI tools. But Ukraine and its private sector allies say they are playing a longer game, creating a war lab for the future. Now, interestingly, there's so much activity going on in terms of the military applications of AI in Ukraine, that there's actually a military startup accelerator called D3 or Dare to Defend Democracy, which includes foreign investors like Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who have invested more than$10 million.

3:10Writes Time, in trips to Ukraine, Schmidt said he became convinced that the country's front lines would produce breakthroughs in the use of AI in drones. Schmidt said, there's simply so much volume, there's so many players, there's so much innovation. It's really impressive. Now, one of the things that the article questions is whether there are risks that are being ignored around the proliferation of these strategies. Certainly, there is some directionality towards other U.S. allies. As Time writes, citing Ukraine as a blueprint, Taiwan has recruited commercial drone makers and aerospace firms to embed within the military to build up its drone program amid rising tensions with China.

3:43Last month, Israel's defense ministry struck a deal with Palantir, and Palantir executives were actually surprised that Israel allowed the partnership to be made public. Quote, almost as if the relationship itself would act as a military deterrence according to a person familiar with the discussions. Now, of course, the question is what about when it's not US allies who deploy this type of technology? On that front, interestingly, The Economist published a piece this week called Vladimir Putin Wants to Catch Up with the West in AI. Although you can tell from the subheader that The Economist isn't really buying it, writing, good luck with that.

4:15Now, this has been a recurring theme from Putin. And the point that The Economist makes is that even if you dismiss the realistic probability that Russia can meaningfully contribute to innovation in this area, the fact that it is becoming such a public priority for Vladimir Putin says a lot about where AI sits in the broader geopolitical realm. One of the things that is really notable to me watching the news every day is the seismic gap between, on the one hand, the political conversation about AI policy and regulation in D.C. and the military integration of AI in D.C. Even as politicians jawbone and propose their own ideas and talk about how important it is to both regulate AI, but also to preserve innovation, the military is just cruising along into an AI-powered future.

5:01And not just the military, but intelligence agencies, and basically the entire security apparatus. In other words, even as there is an AI arms race for the state-of-the-art between Google and OpenAI, there is also an actual AI arms race that is happening with potentially massive implications for the future shape of the world. Anyways, really interesting stuff. Highly recommend you check out that article in time. But for now, that is going to do it for today's AI Breakdown. Appreciate you listening or watching wherever you are. And until next time, peace.