The miniature Nvidia computer that Ukrainian officials say Russia has used in fully autonomous A.I.-guided drones is an inexpensive model designed for civilian robotics and machine vision applications, according to the company.
Ukrainian forensic examiners recently found the minicomputer, the Nvidia Jetson Orin, in the wreckage of drones launched by Russia’s military in apparent tests of a self-targeting system in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency showed New York Times reporters two such guidance systems that included damaged but still recognizable Jetson computer components. Air defense officials said that a drone with one of the systems killed three people in an attack in Zaporizhzhia on July 6.
The Russian weapon is a new step in the use of A.I. in combat. Earlier A.I.-guided drones had a “human in the loop” safety button that required a live pilot to confirm a target. Those systems used artificial intelligence only in the last several hundred yards of a drone’s flight to help make them impervious to radio signal jamming.
The Russian drones tested in Zaporizhzhia from May to July, by contrast, left the strike decision entirely to the Jetson Orin computer, according to an analysis of the chip by Ukrainian investigators. The Red Cross and other rights groups have opposed allowing computers to find and strike targets on their own.
Ukrainian air defense officials and forensic specialists who examined debris from the drones said that the Jetson computers had been trained to identify a range of potential targets. Those included gas stations, which have been a focus of Russian attacks in recent months. The drone that killed three people on July 6 was flying toward a gas station.
Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency said this month that an Nvidia Jetson computer had also been found on a new type of Russian missile, called the S-71M Monochrome, that was being tested in attacks on Ukraine. The Nvidia system may have been used for A.I. guidance, the agency said.
In a statement, Nvidia said that the Jetson Orin computers found in the Russian drones were “consumer-grade products sold to students, developers and start-ups for a wide range of beneficial applications.” They were not designed for military applications, the company added.
The U.S. government restricts exports of items to Russia for military use. Nvidia said that the Jetson line of computers was not sold in Russia but was available in resale markets. The company has said that it cannot track such secondary sales.
The circuit board on which the Nvidia chip was installed was stamped “Made in China.” It was unclear how Russia’s military obtained the computers.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, calls the line of Jetson minicomputers “the world’s most powerful embedded A.I. computers.”
The devices run applications that are trained on large volumes of data rather than explicitly programmed by a human.
As an example of possible uses, Nvidia cited a Japanese manufacturer, Musashi, that trained the Jetson computer to identify defects in welding and other areas on vehicle gearboxes.
The computers replaced human inspectors, whose work Nvidia called “repetitive, stressful and not very engaging.”
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