NATO official says alliance using AI against Russia

A senior official of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) revealed at a forum in Poland that the alliance is using artificial intelligence to track Russian aircraft and fueling stations, Russia Today (RT) reported on Sunday.

David van Weel, NATO's assistant secretary general for innovation, hybrid and cyber, said that the U.S.-led bloc utilizes AI to analyze satellite imagery in order to track and count Russian aircraft and fueling stations at the the NATO-Ukraine Defense Innovators Forum, which was held from June 4 to 6 at AGH University of Krakow, Poland.

In the opinion of the assistant secretary general, using AI in such a manner was in accordance with the bloc's principles on ethical AI use, RT reported.

"It's low-risk," van Weel was quoted by RT as saying. "Nobody gets killed if you get the number off."

The assistant secretary general also pledged to deepen cooperation with Kyiv with a new agreement on "battlefield innovation" at the forum.

Also at the forum, Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine's deputy tech minister, detailed Ukraine is weaponizing military drones to carry out assassinations, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

Ukraine has used data-crunching from Palantir Technologies Inc. for battlefield decision-making and reconstruction work, Bloomberg reported. 

However, the use of AI in military operations has drawn criticisms. "On the frontline, we have no cloud. We have no communications," Oleksandr Chendekov, co-founder of FoxFour, one of several Ukrainian startups, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

Chendekov added that disruptions to internet networks make using even services like ChatGPT impossible.

There are also concerns about whether the AI companies can use all information about the battlefield, because the most valuable information is often treated as classified and not shared with local startups, Chendekov was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.