Damn, some people really don't want anyone to see this
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'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
341–350 of 1001 posts
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#342Accepting technological barbarism is a choice. Among engineers there should be a broad refusal to work on such systems and a blacklist for those who do.
Not everyone sees the world as you do. Given this article and other information I know about this system, I would be honoured to work on it and take a significant pay cut, as it actively makes the world a better and safer place.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#343Getting all these reports about atrocities, I wonder if the conflict in the area has grown more brutal over the decades or if this is just business as usual. I'm in my late 30s, growing up in the EU, the conflict in the region was always present. I don't remember hearing the kind of stories that come to light these days though, indiscriminate killings, food and water being targeted, aid workers being killed. I get th…
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Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#344[flagged]
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Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#345Red flag for me is the part where they say it was left for human to decide if AI generated correct target or false positive based on voice recognition performed by human:
(...) at some point we relied on the automatic system, and we only checked that [the target] was a man — that was enough. It doesn’t take a long time to tell if someone has a male or a female voice (...)
Why would half a dozen, active military offcers brag about careless use of tech and bombing families with children while they sleep risking accusation of treason?
Feels like well done propaganda more than anything else to me.
It's plausible they use AI. It's also plausible they don't that much.
It's plausible it has high false positive rate. It's also plausible it has multiple layers of crosschecks and has very high accuracy - better than human personel.
It's plausible it is used in rush without any doublechecks at all. It's also plausible it's used with or after other intelligence. It's plausible it's used as final verification only.
It's plausible that targets are easier to locate home. It's plausible it's not, ie. it may be easier to locate them around listed, known operation buildings, tracked vehicles, while known, tracked mobile phone is used etc.
It's plausible that half a dozen active officers want to share this information. It's also plausible that narrow group of people have access to this information. It's plausible they would not engage in activity that could be classified as treason. It's also plausible most personel simply doesn't know the origin of orders up the chain, just immediate.
It's plausible it's real information. It's also plausible it's fake or even AI generated, good quality, possibly intelligence produced fake.
Frankly looking at AI advances I'd be surprised if propaganda quality would lag behind operational, on the ground use.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#346HN has a serious problem if factual technology stories cannot exist here because some people don't like the truth. This should be advertised. The true price of AI is people using computers to make decisions no decent person would. It's not a feature, it's a war crime.
I'm not sure why its such a shock to many to see the censorship on HN. This isn't a public square. We are privy to the whims of whatever political views of those that aligned/run/manage/stake in YC and their policies and values.
I'm not shocked, I said it was a problem.
I think it takes a tiny number of flags to nuke a post, independent of its upvotes, so strong negative community opinions are always quick to kill things.
To restore it, mods have to step in, get involved, pick a "side".
I think the flagging criteria needs overhauling so popular, flagged posts only get taken down at the behest of a moderator. But that does mean divisive topics stay up longer.
For the nothing it's worth, I don't see this post as divisive. It's uncovering something ugly and partisan in nature, but a debate about whether or not an AI should be allowed to make these decisions needn't be partisan at all.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#347Accepting technological barbarism is a choice. Among engineers there should be a broad refusal to work on such systems and a blacklist for those who do.
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Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#348As bad as this story makes the Israelis sound, it still reads like ass-covering to make it sound like they were at least trying to kill militants. It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution, with the goal of rendering life in Gaza impossible.
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Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#349Accepting technological barbarism is a choice. Among engineers there should be a broad refusal to work on such systems and a blacklist for those who do.
The people working on these understand the alternative looks like a WWII bombing campaign with greater loss of life