How Ukraine is using AI to fight Russia

IN THE run-up to Ukraine’s rocket attacks on the Antonovsky Bridge, a vital road crossing from the occupied city of Kherson to the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, security officials carefully studied a series of special reports. It was the summer of 2022 and Russia needed the bridge to resupply its troops west of the Dnipro. The reports contained research into two things: would destroying the bridge lead the Russian soldiers, or their families back home, to panic? And, more important, how could Ukraine’s government maximise the blow to morale by creating “a particular information environment”?

This is how Sviatoslav Hnizdovsky, the founder of the Open Minds Institute (OMI) in Kyiv, describes the work his research outfit did by generating these assessments with artificial intelligence (AI). Algorithms sifted through oceans of Russian social-media content and socioeconomic data on things ranging from alcohol consumption and population movements to online searches and consumer behaviour. The AI correlated any changes with the evolving sentiments of Russian “loyalists” and liberals over the potential plight of their country’s soldiers.