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Photos published by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Jan 11, 2025 shows two North Korean military personnel captured by Ukraine forces soldiers in the Kursk region. Two soldiers, though wounded, survived and were transported to Kyiv, where they are now communicating with the Security Service of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said. This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine, he said. I am grateful to the soldiers of Tactical Group No. 84 of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as our paratroopers, who captured these two individuals.
North Korean troops reportedly face brutal treatment in Russia
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Saturday that his troops had captured two North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region and released a video of them describing their experience fighting for Russia. Zelensky said, “This was not an easy task: Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine.”
The two soldiers are now receiving medical attention in Kyiv. Video of interviews with them shows one with a facial wound and one with a broken leg. One claimed he had believed his unit was going to Russia for training, not to fight Ukrainians, and showed that he had been issued false Russian documents.
Ukrainian forces fighting the North Koreans have described them as highly motivated and professional, but their outdated tactics and habit of committing suicide to avoid capture have led to high casualties. A North Korean diary published by Ukraine’s military described using soldiers as bait to draw in drones that other troops could then shoot down, a risky tactic that, if used widely, has likely contributed to between 1,000 and 4,000 casualties out of the roughly 12,000 who were originally deployed.
That attrition rate is simply not sustainable, and though Pyongyang has over 1.2 million military men, there are few highly indoctrinated and capable special forces. That might not be a big issue if incoming US President Donald Trump ends the war promptly as he has promised, but we’re watching for signs of impatience from Pyongyang.A man is seen using the OpenAI ChatGPT artificial intelligence chat website in this illustration photo on 18 July, 2023.
Is AI responsible for a teen’s suicide?
Moments before Sewell Setzer III took his own life in February 2024, he was messaging with an AI chatbot. Setzer, a 14-year-old boy from Florida, had struck up an intimate and troubling relationship — if you can call it that — with an artificial intelligence application styled to simulate the personality of “Game of Thrones” character Daenerys Targaryen.
Setzer gave numerous indications to the chatbot, developed by a company called Character.AI, that he was actively suicidal. At no point did the chatbot break character, provide mental health support hotlines, or do anything to prevent the teen from harming himself, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Setzer’s family last week. The company has since said that it has added protections to its app in the past six months, including a pop-up notification with the suicide hotline. But that’s a feature that’s been standard across search engines and social media platforms for years.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Orlando, also names Google as a defendant. The Big Tech company hired Character.AI’s leadership team and paid to license its technology in August, the latest in a spate of so-called acqui-hires in the AI industry. The lawsuit alleges that Google is a “co-creator” of Character.AI since its founders initially developed the technology while working there years earlier.
It’s unclear what legal liability Character.AI will have. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely protects internet companies from civil suits, is untested when it comes to AI chatbots because it protects companies from speech posted by third parties. In the case of AI chatbots, the speech is directly from an AI company, so many experts have predicted that it won’t apply in cases like this.