In 5 to 10 Years, Using Weapons Without AI Will Be Considered Unethical | Yaroslav Azhnyuk, The Fourth Law

Software and defense tech

0:00There's lots of conversation about AI and defense. What we should be really talking about, I think, is software and defense. We started with making hammers for pets, and now we're making hammers for drones, and we're throwing explosives to people who came to occupy our land. I think, like, within 5-10 years, it will become unethical to use weapons without AI. The same way as it might become unethical to use cars without AI. Because those that are less lethal and non-AI weapons will be more likely to cause collateral damage, not less like them. But my only question to these companies is, if you're so great and powerful, why aren't your asses helping us fight out the rushes?

0:36Why aren't they on the front of us?

Building cameras for drones

0:40Okay. So then you decided to get involved in defense tech.

0:49Actually, I started a second company in defense as well, which makes cameras. So it makes thermal cameras, which are now some of the most popular thermal cameras in the military are used in interceptors. It was probably over a couple thousand heads down with drones with these cameras, and they're used in just frontline FPEs as well. So it's funny, like, there are some people from TechCube who also helped to start this company. And because they were doing cameras for the last 14 years, cameras for pets.

1:26Oh, that's right. Yeah. They have a lot of experience with that. Right. It's so ironic. Like, yeah. Like, we started with making cameras for pets, and now we're making cameras for drones. And we were throwing treats to dogs, and now we're throwing explosives to people who came to occupy our land. And so that's Faith Love's irony, for sure.

Counter drone technology

1:53There seems to be a focus. You're doing counter-drone technology.

1:59Yeah. I mean, with the fourth law, we're working on the massively scalable autonomous systems for drones. And at this point, it involves the, like, frontline FPV drones, and then the interceptor drones, and some other drones as well. The interceptor drones, are those for FPV, or are those for Shahid, or what? Yeah, that's a very good question.

2:29So, probably, like, the most dynamic area that's had interceptors, but obviously, when you're talking about interceptor drones as class, that can apply to intercepting tryheads, ISR drones, or reconnaissance drones, and then even smaller drones, like FPV drones, so frontline protection. So, it's a very important question. And Schmidt's also working on interceptors for Shahid.

3:01Is his, at Swift, is his company only looking at Shahid, or are they doing the full range? Well, I think from the public sources, they've been telling that.

3:18I think there are, like, at least three initiatives. One is Shahid interception, another is frontline autonomous drone, and the third one is something like a mid-strike drone. So, this strike drone capable of, maybe, I don't know, I don't know what is theirs, but mid-strike as a category is up to 200 kilometers. Right. Yeah. And they're very capable, I think.

Competing with Silicon Valley peers

3:43Yeah.

Competing with Silicon Valley peers

3:44Yeah, certainly. I mean, Eric Schmidt is no one more capable on AI. Like, they're our main competitor slash peer. So, like, we don't strictly think of these companies as competitors because they're sort of trying to accomplish the same goal as we are. But, yeah, obviously, this episode in Silicon Valley, the show, where they're like, okay, these guys are making a world better place, but we don't want them to make this better than we're making a world better place. Something like that. It's not like that. So, but there is a recent funding competition there.

4:16But I think that what they're doing is, like, for example, far ahead from what any other company outside of Ukraine was able to demonstrate far ahead of, say, Andrail or Al-San. Right. I think we're close to them in terms of the ground economy. It's like on ground, so sort of actually the economy. And we're somewhat behind in terms of the aerial interception. Yeah. I think, obviously, they have a limited budget side.

4:48Yeah. I think they have some of the best engineers in Silicon Valley, et cetera. And, like, at the moment, I try to do back-of-the-millions of dollars in investment. And he has this incubator with D3, right? Yeah, it's like full disclosure. I was somewhat involved in starting that. In the D3 incubator? It's a small group of people who were sort of at the inception of that. Right, right. And is that funding primarily defense tech, or are they funding everything?

5:22Yeah, I think their public stance is that they're funding defense tech. And it doesn't have to be necessarily a Ukrainian team. So I think, like, half of their portfolio is teams originally from Ukraine, and the other half is not in Ukraine. Right. Because it's relatively small by Eric Schmidt's time last year. So I think it's like a couple dozen million dollars. So it's like very small money. How much? Maybe, like, it started with, like, 10 million dollars.

5:55Oh, is that right? Maybe now tens of millions of dollars. Yeah. And do you have any sense of their production versus your production? I mean, how many interceptors they're building? Oh, well, you, like, this is not something that you're supposed to sort of disclose in public. We do have sense, of course. You have what? I think people in the industry do have a sense. Have a sense. Yeah.

Vertical integration versus modular software

6:23I mean, but is he full production now? Are you full production? Are you still ramping up? Well, you know, like, I think everyone is ramping up in this world. Yeah. It's like, obviously, they're called Nero, the interceptors, by Eric's company. I mean, I think they've started selling them to Poland and Romania. I think they've had some, actually, like, production roadblocks for Ukraine. I'm not sure, you know, what the plan is with their activity in Ukraine.

6:59They're also very capable interceptors by other companies, which are not as advanced with AI. But those companies, the interceptor, I mean, they're buying AI modules from us. Oh. So, it's a very different approach. I would say what Eric is doing is more akin to sort of Apple's strategy. They have the full vertical integration. They ship that to you. And what we are doing, along with some other Ukrainian makers, is more akin to Android strategy,

7:33where different teams work in different modules. So, for example, we provide autonomy modules, which are growing in their capacity. And those modules can be adopted onto various types of systems.

7:49Because I was trying to understand where their models are coming from, where their chips are coming from. He was saying they produce them in Ukraine. Is there an adequate semiconductor manufacturing or assembly in Ukraine to provide chips? Yeah, I think he might have misunderstood the question. There is no semiconductor manufacturing in Ukraine. Maybe he was talking about the circuit boards. The assembly, yeah.

8:20Yeah, so you can do sort of circuit board assemblies in Ukraine.

8:28There are some facilities where you can do up to eight layers. But I don't think they are necessarily using them or – well, it doesn't matter. So, you can do a lot in Ukraine, but then in terms of the actual chips or the sensors, like we're using sensors for thermal cameras, these currently have to be bought from MAID and semiconductor fabs. There are some plans to do semiconductor manufacturing in Ukraine, including our plan of building a thermal sensor factory.

9:09But that is still planned. They have this rocket-shaped form factor that doesn't fly like a cruise. Are you guys using something similar or are you using the traditional – we're, like, as a maker of autonomous systems, we're providing modules which can be integrated onto this form factor. So, the most successful Ukraine interceptor is a company called Wild Hornets, and they're producing this drone called Sting.

9:39So, it's a very similar form factor to General Cherry's. In fact, it was similar to a scandal where Sting said that General Cherry just copied what they did. It's more or less like, you know, you made a car, so you copied my idea for a car. It's hard. It's an IP that's hard to protect. So, we're working with all of these guys, and then there are two major categories. One is sort of what we call a rocket drone or sort of a tail-sipper drone with these four sort of wing propellers.

10:13Another is a more classic sort of plane form factor, and there are a number of companies which are making planes.

10:24Fixed wing, you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, yeah. Fixed wing, fixed wing, UEDs.

10:31So, we're working with both of those.

Five levels of drone autonomy

10:33When you say autonomous, how autonomous are these? Yeah, yeah, like there's a rabbit hole here. So, I sort of have this classification that I suggested, and most people in the market sort of accept that it's something that makes sense. So, when we talk about the individual autonomy for a single drone, we talk about these five levels of autonomy. And when we talk about the ecosystem, we talk about sort of eight dimensions of all the autonomous systems. So, the five levels for autonomy, similar to five levels for safe sub-driving, and we have level one is autonomous terminal guidance.

11:12So, whenever you see the target as a pilot, the client is a pilot, non-autonomously manually, you target log. And after that, the drone is capable to autonomously hit the target in all the possible circumstances. That's level one of the time. Level two autonomy is sort of the same, but instead of hitting it kind of kind of style, you do bomb it. So, you calculate one to drop the ammunition, and you do the escape one. Right. So, that would be level two. Level three would be when your system can identify the target, autonomously, and make a decision to start.

11:51So, it's flying, and then it scans whatever it sees through its camera. And then when it sees, it knows that it is now in a mode where it's sort of in a kill zone, it's to find a target. When it sees a target, it first recognizes it, and then gets enough confidence to make a decision to start on a strike, which would be, again, either level one or level two.

12:15Level four is navigation, so that you can navigate all the paths from the unit where you start, where the risk of kill zone, where you need to find a bad gun. Level five is autonomous takeoff in length, so you can be bombing, you can reach on the land. So, that's for, sort of, for flying drones, you can, sort of, adopt it to any kind of autonomous vehicle. And then, when you, when you look, sort of, further about the, like, for us, individual autonomy is, is, is very important to accomplish, and it's very important to accomplish in mass.

12:52So, if the system that allows drones to be in visual autonomy costs, even a couple thousand dollars, it will be difficult to use such system on F3 drones, which cost just $100 per piece. Such system has to be relatively inexpensive, and also relatively easy to manufacture, so that it can be manufactured in millions, because that's what the running warfare demands. And then, if you look further, how, to the individual autonomy, you have, sort of, this autonomous, autonomous battlefield.

13:27And there, you have these eight dimensions of autonomy, as we say. So, dimension one is levels of autonomy, five levels of freedom, and stuff. Dimension two is the kind of carrier that you use. So, it can be a helicopter, it can be an FBV, it can be a larger survivor, so it can be a fixed plane, it can be a missile, it can be even a shell, a nuclear shell, it can be a Nancy vehicle, or a Nancy vehicle, or a Nancy vehicle, or a Nancy vehicle.

14:01So, the third layer, the third dimension, is domain, so if you do, you can, you can use quadcopter, but it can be in ground-to-ground domain, against enemy, infantry, or a tank, it can be ground-to-air, an interception, or it can be ground-to-sea, which is quite a different task, and all the combinations of, of domains. So, that's, sort of, sort of, the third dimension.

14:31The fourth dimension is, sort of, what we call, higher levels of autonomy, things like, swarms, bone carriers, bone nests, etc. Then you have, like, number five would be, different outside conditions, so day, night, winter, summer, different types of targets, because attacking, an infantry unit, or attacking, um, tank, or, or, or vehicle, are, uh, slightly different tasks, which, which require some different developments.

15:07Um, then you have, level six, you have a command and control, uh, systems, so, as a, as a commander of a brigade, which is, like, two to five thousand people, or, even ports, which can be up to, you know, forty thousand people, um, how do you manage all of your units with the, uh, these autonomous assets, how do you manage all the data coming from those assets, how do you command, analyze, etc.? Um, then, on level seven, you have all the infrastructure needed for all this to work, uh, starting with, uh, simulations, which are used routinely for testing, etc., to, um,

15:50things like, um, data collection mechanisms, security subsystems, um, remote deployment subsystems. Um, and then, finally, uh, sort of, dimension number eight is how massively deployed that system is, because if you have one system, uh, deployed in hundreds of thousands of units, and another just passed the field test provisions, and are just being tested, you know, a couple hundred units being tested, those are very different systems, very different levels of capability.

16:21Uh, so that's sort of how we think about this whole ecosystem. I think it's, like, what's going on here is just astounding. This is, this is, like, the Defense Valley. Right, exactly. Like, here now, in this room, there is a guy who, like, sits somewhere here, who works in the industry, whom I know very well. And this happens to me all the time. Like, I, I come to meet some Defense Technology founder, and then there is another Defense Technology founder who walks into a company.

16:55And we introduce each other. So it's a very, very, like, Silicon Valley vibe. Yeah. You know, lots of confidence and demands. Yeah. The ideas flow.

The Florence of defense

17:04Yeah. Lots of expertise. So, even with the domain expertise, you know, I say this all the time, that my definition of strategy is that strategy is a plan of victory using the uniqueness of your situation. The uniqueness of Ukraine's situation is that we've been at war with Russia for 12 years, and no one else in the world wants to steal that advantage from us. Yeah. So, you have a couple million people who are, one way or another, involved in this.

17:37So, either as fighters, or as makers, engineers, entrepreneurs, or as assembly workers, or as volunteers, operation specialists, governmental clerks. So, this is an incredible domain experience, and it will remain so for the decades to come, even if tomorrow there is a ceasefire. And, like, for me, it's obvious the world will be rearming for the next couple decades, driven by supply chain instability, by, obviously, advances in drones and robotics, and obviously by AI.

18:18So, three huge factors that will drive the global rearrangement. Conventionally and unconventionally, I think we have probably another dozen or dozen and a half countries in the world who are now working on their nukes, who do not have an official nuclear status. So, unconventionally, I think that will also proliferate. Again, because of, sort of, Russian invasion of Ukraine and Budapest Memorandum and, sort of, the current policy, the current policy by the U.S.

18:52So, now there is this very unique moment in time for Ukraine, which can be a cornerstone of, not just Ukrainian, but European strategy, building, you know, the Florence of Defense here. And this is happening. I think the government can definitely accelerate that if they pass some smart regulations. But, one way or another, Ukraine and Ukrainians will play a critical role in the rearmament of the West. Do you think that the industry will turn back to commercial consumer tech after the war?

19:29Do you think that enough defense of a defense industry has been built that Ukraine will become a supplier? Absolutely. But, I think that when I hear after the war, I imagine something quite different. If we have ceasefire with Russia in 2026, this is not after the war. Right. After the war is when the global arms race is put to a standstill. Before that, unfortunately, in the next couple of decades, the whole world will be re-arming and, you know, one piece prepared for the war.

20:06So, that's what everyone is going to be doing. Because these systems, they just change the equation so much. Yeah. Like, you can take out a $5 million tank, you know, the drone costing $500. Yeah. And if you can add autonomy to that drone for the cost of a couple hundred dollars on top. And, you know, an autonomy itself makes every drone usable by a hundred times as many people. Right. So, you know, this pilot makes 10 times more precise, makes it not one-time kamikazza, but multiple-time bombers, probably 10 times more utility.

20:42So, you guys, basically, order over 10,000 times improvement by adding complete autonomy to the system. 5 million dollars and $500. How many orders of magnitude is that? It's like a thousand? 10,000. So, it's 10 to the, like, 10 to the fourth multiplied by 10 to the fourth is like 10 to the eighth. 10,000. It's like, what? 10,000. 10 million times? 100 million times? Yeah.

21:12100 million times more people than current systems. It's like, it's hard for human to imagine what that is.

Threats and global rearmament

21:2110,000. And then, like, if we talk about threats, like, in September, there were 20 Russian Shahad imitators, Herbera, what they call it, flying over Poland. Only four of those were shut down with equipment that cost probably two orders of magnitude more than the assets.

21:54General Secretary Rutte had a press approach saying, we did a fantastic job, we've shown resolve of NATO, how we can protect our land. But, it's obvious to everyone, it was a huge disaster. Yeah. Now imagine Russia attacking with, those were even drones without any explosives in them. Imagine Russia attacking with 50 actual Shahads. With 50? Shahads.

22:24So they're attacking an airport in Zeshu, a city where, close to Ukraine, lots of Ukraine equipment is being tempted. Well, that's, you know, when you're talking… Russians say, you know, it's a legitimate target. Attack that. What will Europe and NATO do? Will we send 50 storm shadows to some obscure Russian city? Well, most people I talk to in the EU say that we won't have the guts to do that.

22:54But even if, will it be sort of an eye for an eye? No. It will be huge defeat for Europe, huge defeat for the free world. It will be a precedent. And Russia doesn't care. Ukraine blows their cities every night. So what? Yeah. And obviously, huge impact on the markets, huge impact on the economy, huge impact on everything. Now, the second scenario is Ukraine produced about 4 million of these inexpensive FPV drones last year.

23:28$500 each. So if Ukraine can do that… By the way, the United States cannot do it today. You cannot… You can just… There's no capacity to produce that many drones in a year. But if Ukraine can do it for a million, Ukraine can easily do it for a billion. Yeah. And then, if they really want to, they can probably do them, not with propellers, but with wings. So a fixed wing, which is launched from a tube, which flies not 30 kilometers, but maybe 200 kilometers.

24:02Yeah. And DGI is the world's leading drone technology company, and I'm sure they have the autonomous capabilities that they need. And then Chinese shipbuilding is also very impressive. So can they build thousands of autonomous submarines capable of carrying those drones? I'm pretty sure they can. So what if China builds 5,000 underwater submarines carrying a couple hundred of these autonomous drones, very inexpensive, capable of going up to 200 kilometers inland each, and shows up to the coast of California or Taiwan or Great Britain?

24:51Is there a good response to that? I don't think so. Hunter subs won't be enough. Well, that's a very interesting question. Yeah. One of my questions that I've been asking, why hasn't that already happened? Because Russia does not have very strong AI research. But this is not cutting edge research.

25:23This is pretty much a solved problem. Well, that's what I thought. And you would think that... But it's not about only Russia, like even the United States doesn't have the capability. No. The United States doesn't have two autonomous drones, which don't rely on GPS. And it doesn't have them at an inexpensive cost. And what it has... Well, I'm sorry to say this, but I'm not sure if it works. Because, I don't know, I have tremendous respect for companies like Candrel.

25:59Yeah. But my only question to these companies is, if you're so great and powerful, why aren't your asses helping us to fight Russia's? Why aren't they on the front lines? Although, this is what interests me about Eric's. He is different in that extent. Because his stuff actually works. Yeah. And my guess is that for him, Ukraine, as you said, there's going to be a rearmament.

26:37Ukraine is like a development zone. And field testing. Yeah. Yeah, look, I think Eric is a remarkably smart guy. I had a chance to meet him a couple of times. And he just saw around the corner before everyone else. Remember, he was doing work for the U.S. Department of Defense before Russia.

27:09Yeah. And he also had the luxury of a lot more free time than many others. Yes. He was able to think deeply and think ahead about these problems. And that's why he focused so much of his attention on Ukraine and still is focusing. I think one of the smartest things that he did is actually hiring a lot of people here and very quickly iterating with the actual military units.

27:41Because you cannot, you know, it's like, I went through Wicom Nature program in 2016. And the one thing they teach folks who get in is, actually they teach everyone, talk to your customers. Talk to your customers. Talk to your customers. This is the most important thing that you can do as a company. And, well, obviously for Android, the customer is Department of Defense. They're doing their job. For Eric Schmidt, the customer is some future fighters, which will fight future wars.

28:16And so, because the future is currently here. Yeah. He comes here regularly. He has a wide team here, forward deployed engineers, working with particular brigades. And that's why they were able to build something that actually works. And that actually saves lives because they, you know, their essence intersect, which I have, above our heads. And, you know, I'll save lives of infantry by, you know, destroying Russian advances. So, I think that's why he succeeded.

28:47And I think other companies are slowly coming around to that. And there's more and more for foreign officers, talent coming in here. And that's why, that's why it is the defense valley, the Florence of Defense. Yeah. Why do you think he's avoiding press? Oh, I think it's, it's funny, because he's been avoiding press.

29:18But then from time to time, there are these huge press releases, which is like, this is so inconsistent with that strategy. Like the first one was when, I think the last year in Denmark, they signed like a big deal with Zelensky. And there were like photos of Eric and Zelensky and so on. And that was like, out of the blue. I saw that. It was like, okay, strategy change. And then again, like, they went back into silence. And then I think there was news of them doing a deal with Poland.

29:49So that was, again, sort of public. So I have no idea. I think it's just, I think there was a good team of lawyers who are thinking this way. Yeah.

Ethics of AI in defense

30:02Yeah. Yeah. On autonomy, I'm trying to understand these levels of autonomy. You know, I, I worked on the National Security Commission on AI, which Eric was the chairman and was a Pentagon funded. I think you were referring to his work with the, I've forgotten the name, but the outfit in California that was, I think he was like, like, either an advisor to the government or something like that on the matters of the defense technologies.

30:39Right. Yeah. Even like writing about that, along with some accomplished people in the military, like you can tell he's been thinking deeply about these problems. But they make it very clear when they speak in the United States that full autonomy is off the table. That, you know, legal autonomous, lethal autonomous weapons that target autonomously is something that they will not do.

31:16Well, what if China does it again? Well, that's right. I mean, that's what I say. That's, that's what they say. But everyone knows it's like Iran, Iran, with, with their enriching uranium, they say, Oh, we're only going to enrich this much for fuel. But to get to the next level, you just run it longer. Yeah. You just flip the switch basically. Yeah. So, and then, you know, it's, I think that this is made more complicated by the press than it should be.

31:49The ethics of AI in defense. Let's take an example of an artillery shot. When do you make a decision to strike a target with an artillery shot? Well, in the moment, well, when you pull it for you, you fired a gun. So you cannot stop an artillery shell 500 meters away from the target and ask for a human confirmation, whether it's the right target or whether we shot, you know, two kilometers in the wrong direction and then hit the village.

32:20You can think of an autonomous drone as an artillery shell with propellers. And you make a decision the moment you launch, the moment you give command. Right. So that makes things much, much easier. The second thing I want to say on this topic is that I think, like, within five to 10 years, it will become unethical to use weapons without AI. The same way as it might become unethical to use cars without AI. Right. Because those are less lethal.

32:50And non-AI weapons will be more likely to cross-prival advantage, not less level. And the third one is you can be good guys, but bad guys are not going to abide by the rules. Right. So we've got to have at least the capability to have these systems working not at the speed of a human command chain, but at the speed of the software command chain. And then also, you know, there's, there's lots of conversation about AI and defense, but AI is just sort of the latest big thing.

33:27And what we should be really talking about, I think, is software and defense. Because a lot of these new capabilities are created not with AI, just classical software and, like, even AI software, right? Yeah. And then, like, look, even AI is such a buzzword, right? Yeah. Alex Matt is, what, 15 years old? Right. And, like, image recognition capabilities are, you know, at least a decade old and they're more than sort of cases.

34:01And a lot of what is called AI for defense is just image recognition. And then, obviously, we're interacting with large language models now as consumers. So people think that, okay, a drone with AI is something like a chat GPT with propellers that can explode. It's not like that at all. Of course. It's far from that. And if you look, if you think about the robotic system in an academical sense, you have sensors in.

34:32So you have basically physical data, receptive by hardware, by sensors. Then you have three software layers. You have perception, planning, and control. Right. And then you have actuators out. So commands to monitors, which move the thing somewhere or make things grow. And those layers, perception, planning, and control, each of them can be done by classical software, lots of aspects. Like literature on that, lots of evidence, lots of robotic systems, which use that.

35:04And then each of them can be done by a neural net or all three of them can be combined into one neural net or they can be grouped two by neural net, one by classical algorithms. So we're definitely sort of going towards the world where these systems will be able to do control on their own. And some will have some freedom in decision making whether, you know, but the first decision these systems are going to make is, okay.

35:35if you know that the enemy vehicle is hiding behind a building, whether I go around the building from the right side or from the left side. Yeah. And for years ahead, an AI-enabled defense system will be no closer to a Skynet appraising than a warehouse of 155 caliber shells. it's just it's just not there uh and then i think before we are at a risk of being wiped out by uh

36:13defense sky net we will uh be many years on the risk of being wiped out by um advanced asia uh developed on on servers of one of these big hyperscale firms yeah um so in that extent i think you know we should be careful about ai but first and foremost about uh sort of agi and even with agi i'm not um i'm not as afraid of it in the coming uh years so i think that that's it's more

36:48subtle than than skynet or you know yeah that's i think that's that's a good one um and then also sort of raises uh goes back to the question of sovereignty and uh like people mostly talk about the sovereign supply chains but there's also sovereign technology and sovereign know-how i think it was yesterday was in the news that uh donald trump said that they might uh ban tragedy in germany or something like that and that basically sends the signal to not just to

37:21germany but to the entire world you gotta develop your own uh foundation models and obviously one person that's very happy is uh jensen huang um because uh he's like that's his message box like every country should have their own sovereign and like of course they should buy our chips well he's he's in very good business he's very smart uh one thing i think about the agi is actually that i think there's very high probability that um to develop agi it will have to it will have to get

37:56into physical bodies it will have to be uh like these agents will have to be actual robots and try to take a role because i think the good analogy um i sort of came up with is it's like the plato's cape like the current lms are living in the plato's cave and they're learning about the world from the shadows on the walls which are what humans wrote about the world uh but they cannot experience the world themselves yeah so for them to be able to experience uh the world that they would have to

38:30have the buddies and walk out of the cave and i think this is also like like there are a number of researchers who are sort of working that direction like tafe lee i think is like her work is very interesting um and uh yeah i think like some people in the industry shared a situation as well on the autonomy when you're saying uh the decision is is whether or not to launch but once it's launched navigation targeting and execution or yeah are all autonomous that has to be uh on board that model

39:09uh you can't be connecting to uh you can have uh you can have connectivity as an option right but you have to be able to uh have a fail-safe mechanism like whatever there is no kind of connectivity can be jammed the the point where it connects to can be destroyed um so you you gotta you gotta do all of that on the edge and actually so you said it starts when it's launched but it it will gradually start even

39:43earlier and earlier so imagine autonomous system detecting and then launching uh right then autonomous system launching systems which will detect yeah uh so it's it's like this uh there's this effect factoria computer game so you just keep automating automating automating automating you know higher

Scaling up autonomy modules

40:04higher higher and and the drones that you're building how autonomous are they at this point so we are building drones but we also building uh the autonomy modules as we call them and sometimes we just even license the manufacturing of these mobile modules license them out and we license out the software so we then we just produce the software which the manufacturer of drones right installs and their drones uh but we do we do we do make our own drones as well it's just like

40:34making drones is sort of a more of a commodity and um the really like interesting thing about this is uh you know drone is like hamburger so you can make a hamburger in your kitchen but the really difficult thing is make them adults this may make a factory which makes same hamburgers with a very short time frame you can make millions of them without onions or with onions you know and that's what the ukraine drone making companies are but what what we ship currently in mass is sort of level one autonomy

41:08for ground interception and we call the level zero for aerial interception which is a detector as the ai detector which helps pilot to see the target but doesn't really take over the control of the ground and the other systems we have on various levels of development and deployment um there are five systems which are sort of ready to be fielded and are in the process of early testing by them

41:45and yeah it is like as i've said there are so many like different dimensions to this right so it's like same level of capability but in different platforms or in different domains or um you know so daytime nighttime camera etc and obviously you know not not everything i can talk about um um but yeah it's uh it's a very exciting and fast race and then remember um um in 2017 a vladimir putin said that uh whoever will master ai will rule over the world i remember

42:25like just think about how evil that phrase is will rule over the world will not cure all the diseases will not save the humanity it's like it's it could have been like even knowing putin it could have been save the humanity right with his uh kgb lies but no he was very explicit what what he wants to do that's right although although he he hasn't done a very good job of of mastering ai well no that's just classical

42:57russia they they lost everything they could they lost the uh their space technology and like in in in 2011 when the u.s sunsetted the shuttle program uh like soyuz operated by russia but developed by ukrainian kordov because that's kordov's legacy kordov is ukrainian he basically thought of himself as ukrainian the first first ever song which was sang in space to kordov's uh uh wish was a ukrainian song

43:29which literally says why am i not a falcon why don't i fly um so basically um when uh when when when the american program wasn't ready uh you know uh everyone flew into space on the ukrainian ship operated by russians and then now they have their planes falling apart and that they were not able to build their their own plane they have huge setbacks in their rocket programs so it's it's a country

44:01that's completely destroyed by corruption and incompetence but still can do a lot of harm i'm

Solving edge cases in warfare

44:06trying to like zero in on autonomy because some people say well the ai isn't there yet we don't have models that can target precisely for example cannot differentiate between a tank and a civilian car i don't think that's true yeah like come on like who believes that of course we can so why are

44:34the drones if produced by ukraine why aren't they given that level of autonomy is it a cost issue that the or a supply chain i'll ask you a couple other questions in that and and that line why aren't drones produced by the us don't have that capability well that's right but but the us is not in an active yes then why don't we have self-driving cars and but that's a regulatory issue it's not not really like the technology isn't ready and the reason and and then it's close i mean way more operates it's

45:08going to be in york city i know i know i know but it's been closed for what 10 years more well i mean sebastian from started in 2007 and nasa challenge was even before that um the the answer and then also why why don't we have ai agents all over the internet doing like useful work why why didn't they replace you and me and all of our friends i think the answer to all of those questions about why isn't ai more widespread is the edge cases yeah like thousands and millions of edge cases yeah which

45:44have to be polished out and the thing with the warfare is that if you have uh say enough to be drawn as a system that in you know used by millions but what is what is its effectiveness well it's between 10 and 20 percent 10 20 percent of these zones which are used actually hit the target and explode when it's going to cause the desire you're talking about the interceptor drones no i talk about the frontline right so that's a low uh sort of mark to overcome right and that's why drones like cars are

46:22currently using the frontline and they increase the sufficiency by two to four times even with level one autonomous system uh but then as you go further with wider wider economy you basically you multiply advantage cases um and then add to that not autonomous but robotics problems i think most of the things we deal with is not about ai is is about software and uh robotics um so from the outside because ai is

46:54such about buzzword it might seem that a drone company that does ai uh has you know 80 of its staff or engineering staff doing ai but it's more like 10 percent because there are so many other problems um so it will happen it just it will it will just have to go through all of these issues and it's hard to predict when there's always this this s curve right you go or some threshold and you have this takeoff um i i certainly predict it it's gonna not take as long as it took this organic person yeah and and

47:32regarding the us i mean there's a existential imperative in ukraine that so things are moving much faster um than elsewhere in the world um do you in in terms of the targeting navigation has been pretty much solved right not really unfortunately yeah it's like again this is like there's so much sort of common

48:02like you would you would think it was solved it's not because if you think about the navigation problem well first of all it's not one problem it's like a hundred different problems because navigation for a 500 drone which has to fly 40 kilometers and maybe 20 kilometers and then we turn back and flies at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour or six miles per hour that's one problem navigation for a wing missile that goes slightly subsonic is another problem navigation for you know i was

48:35like a lot last night called corrections for hypersonic is is a very different problem as well you're flying above uh like the altitude of flight as very much um important for navigation as you're flying high it's easier to know flying low you have less data about what's what's uh then you fly uh above a body of water much more difficult to navigate than a body of land uh if you fly at low altitude so all of these factors the length the cost the altitude uh the terrain all of them impact the navigational system

49:10and they're going to be like one ai you know google maps that solves it for anything and cost nothing is in your smartphone um it's going to be very different than that although maybe at some point there will be uh something like like i just described um and then but yeah you were about to ask about the the target detection actually yeah so the target that that part is solved right but you have a camera you have uh object recognition either thermal or or uh yeah segmented uh and you the drone hits that

49:48target i'm talking about kamikaze right it's that target yeah why isn't or is that already being used well it is it is solved to some extent right it's it's easy to spot um you know a green tank on on on on a white snowy field it's much more difficult to spot something camouflaged then uh you see russians riding on donkeys uh like was that in the data set probably not um then you see dressing the russians

50:25dressed up like penguins was that in the data set also not really um then um you know when you talk about the practicality of this um it's not just about the algorithm that can recognize an image uh so you have an fpd drone that's autonomous how fly how high should it fly if it flies lower and it's closer to what it does recognize it can maybe recognize it better but it has a smaller field of

51:02view and how fast does it fly does it does it scout the territory or find something or or how does the recognition uh integrate with navigation and then how does that integrate with the tactics of its usage like do we need autonomous drones against the infantry or do we need against any logistics um there are so many of these questions um that in practice going from the technology of being able to recognize

51:33to the device that's actually usable useful usable and creates more utility than the existing alternatives is not a super obvious thing yeah are you worried about fully autonomous just in terms of the human cost of war

51:54i'm not sure what you mean by that question if you have fully autonomous a.i guided fire and forget drones maybe even launched yeah uh that's a pretty terrifying prospect on both sides oh no like it's terrifying if the enemy has it if we have it it's it's a savior that's right yeah and we if we don't have it that is what is terrifying right yeah and like you obviously you need to have

52:25autonomous interceptors to contract enemy autonomous drones because uh the mass and and like like how many of them they can deploy will will not be as intended by humans now and then obviously even now hard for human to match the speed agility of machines that will be become harder and harder um so i am what i'm terrified about is that we won't get that we won't get there as fast as the enemy does

52:59yeah yeah that's i'm terrified yeah okay