Live data from Hacker News

'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza

972mag.com

11–20 of 1001 posts

Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza

#14
Two sources said that during the early weeks of the war they were permitted to kill 15 or 20 civilians during airstrikes on low-ranking militants. Attacks on such targets were typically carried out using unguided munitions known as “dumb bombs”, the sources said, destroying entire homes and killing all their occupants.

The world should not forget this.

Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza

#18
post #9

that would explain the news today of how Israel killed seven aid workers in Gaza [0] [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-we-know-so-fa...

Shades of https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-i....

> It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

> Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.

Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza

#19
post #3

There is no justification for killing noncombatants, even if AI told you you could.

[flagged]

Really? I guess they're just "following orders" from the AI then. What a shameful response, if Russia did this or if the roles were reversed you'd be appalled.

Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza

#20
I suggest everyone listen to the current season of the Serial podcast.

>processing masses of data to rapidly identify potential “junior” operatives to target. Four of the sources said that, at one stage early in the war, Lavender listed as many as 37,000 Palestinian men who had been linked by the AI system to Hamas or PIJ.

This is really no different than how the world was working in 2001 and choosing who to send to Gitmo and other more secretive prisons, or bombing their location

More than anything else it feels like just like in the corporate world, the engineers in the army are overselling the AI buzzword to do exactly what they were doing before it existed

If you use your paypal account to send money to an account identified as ISIS, you're going to get a visit from a 3 letter organization really quick. This sounds exactly like that from what the users are testifying to. Any decision to bomb or not bomb a location wasn't up to the AI, but to humans

Post reply on HN