Zelensky at UN General Assembly: AI could start deciding battle outcomes as soon as next year

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York, warning that artificial intelligence could begin making autonomous decisions on the battlefield as soon as next year — and urged world leaders to end active conflicts before that threshold is crossed.

“We need to slow this process down before we reach the next level, because as soon as next year there is a real possibility that AI — not just people — will start deciding what happens on the battlefield. And we need peace before we reach that point,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president’s warning is grounded in specific events from the war. In August, The New York Times reported that a Russian drone that killed three people in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia was equipped with commercially available Nvidia mini-computers that helped the weapon select targets autonomously. The commander of Zaporizhzhia’s air defense system, Colonel Serhiy Minaiev, compared the situation to the Terminator films, saying that “machines are making decisions about strikes.”

Zelensky also cautioned that some AI proponents believe the technology will eventually “leave the digital world and begin transforming matter.”

“And when that happens, we had better already be living in peace,” he added.

Beyond the topic of artificial intelligence, Zelensky portrayed Russian President Vladimir Putin as the main obstacle to peace, calling him “patient zero” — “the one from whom the war keeps spreading further and further.” He said that this year Russia has lost approximately 248,000 people killed and wounded in order to seize roughly 1,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.

Zelensky also expressed regret over the absence of Chinese leader Xi Jinping from the General Assembly, who at the time of the speech was in Washington for a summit with President Trump. The Ukrainian president called Xi “a person capable of influencing Russia — more than many, many others.”

Zelensky’s speech highlighted a divergence between Kyiv and Washington in their approaches to artificial intelligence. Trump, who addressed the assembly on Tuesday, September 22, dismissed warnings about the dangers of the technology and proposed renaming AI “superintelligence,” calling the word “artificial” misleading.

“Whoever masters superintelligence will win,” Trump said, adding that the United States is ahead of China and intends to maintain that advantage.

Trump called recent concerns about the existential risks of AI “a hoax” and proposed creating an “AI Force” and appointing an “AI tsar” rather than slowing the development of the technology.