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

972mag.com

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

#411

Post by yrro »

sequoia wrote: post #362

I'm disturbed by the idea that an AI could be used to make decisions that could proactively kill someone. (Presumably computer already make decisions that passively kill people by, for example, navigating a self-driving car.) Though there was a human sign-off in this case, it seems one step away from people being killed by robots with zero human intervention which is about one step away from the plot of Terminator. I…

"A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision"

The IDF only read the first half of the classic IBM slide!

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

#412

Post by koutetsu »

shmatt wrote: post #311
stevenwoo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unconfirmed who authorized it but the recent food charity workers killed by Israeli bombing had a security person (death confirmed by family in UK) who is unarmed but by job description clears the way by telling Israeli authorities where the charity team is going to be so the chain of command knew who they were, so one is naturally lead to ask - who would authorize a targeted killing in this situation? The after…

War zones aren't as quiet and organized as you would imagine. More so when one side is disguised as regular civilians. All war zones also have people killed by friendly fire. I would assume friendly fire > killing western charity workers > killing civilians in order of importance to the military Yet still, even that its the most important, friendly fire still happens

I agree with the other commenter that this goes way beyond "friendly fire". According to a Haaretz article, those aid workers were targeted 3 times in a row and I assume someone had to confirm the bombing for all 3 of them. This isn't friendly fire. I would love to see their validation data to check on their claim of 90% accuracy.

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

#413

Post by binary132 »

cgh wrote: post #395
spxneo wrote: post #300

The most disturbing part for me (going beyond Israel/Palestine conflict) is that modern war is scary: - Weaponized financial trojan horses like crypto - Weaponized chemical warfare through addictions - Drone swarm attacks in Ukraine - AI social-media engineered outrage to change publics perception - Impartial, jingoistic mainstream war propaganda - Censorship and manipulation of neutral views as immoral - Weaponized…

Judged by number of war-related deaths per capita, we are living in the most peaceful time in human history. The last major conflict was the Second Congo War in the ‘90s, which killed around 5.4 million people and involved a bunch of African nations. If you want to talk about scary wars, try reading about that one. I realize this seems almost unrealistically upbeat, and most people don’t want to believe it given what…

I don’t see magnitude of mortality as necessarily a good indicator for the prevalence of violence or “peace”.

Let’s say, for the sake of the thought experiment, that every weekday, a small swarm of killer drones is released in your city. These drones reliably, randomly target and kill 250 commuters per weekday.

That’s only 62,500 people per year. Pretty mild. Certainly nowhere near as bad as Covid, maybe about as bad as a bad flu year, right? Heart disease kills about 700,000 people a year, so it’s not even 10% of that. Barely registers on the dashboard.

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

#414

Post by machina_ex_deus »

barbazoo wrote: post #171

Getting 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…

[flagged]

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

#415

Post by Adverblessly »

goethes_kind wrote: post #186

Israel's evil keeps taking me by surprise. I guess when people go down the path of dehumanization there are truly no limits to what they are ready to do. But what is even sadder is that the supposedly morally superior western world is entirely bribed and blackmailed to stand behind Israel. And then you have countries like Germany where you get thrown in jail for being upset at Israel.

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

#416

Post by stonogo »

sequoia wrote: post #396
readyplayeremma wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> B., a senior officer who used Lavender, echoed to +972 and Local Call that in the current war, officers were not required to independently review the AI system’s assessments, in order to save time and enable the mass production of human targets without hindrances. > “Everything was statistical, everything was neat — it was very dry,” B. said. He noted that this lack of supervision was permitted despite internal che…

Hm OK, I read this a bit differently. I read these sections: > One source stated that human personnel often served only as a “rubber stamp” for the machine’s decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing — just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. > According to the sources, the army knew that the minimal human supervisio…

The difference is between inaccuracy of a weapon hitting a target and inaccuracy of target selection in the first place.

Remember the scene in Men In Black where the recruita do target practice? They were all accurate at hitting what they shot at but only Will Smith's character was accurate at selecting a target. This AI chooses targets; it does not fire weapons.

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

#417

Post by dang »

resource_waste wrote: post #294

I'm probably pro-isreal because I'm a realpolitik American that wants America's best interest. (But I'm not strong either way) Just watched someone get their post deleted for criticizing Israel's online PR/astroturfing. Israel's ability to shape online discussion has left a bad taste in my mouth. Trust is insanely low, I think the US should get a real military base in Israel in exchange for our effort. If the US gets…

Posts don't get deleted on HN, except on rare occasions when the author asks us to delete something (and usually then only if they didn't get replies).

Posts do get flagged and/or killed, whether by user flags, software, or mods, but you can always see all of those if you turn 'showdead' on in your profile. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

If you notice a post getting flagged and/or killed that shouldn't have been, you can let us know and we'll take a look. You can also use the 'vouch' feature, also described in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

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

#418

Post by xenospn »

arp242 wrote: post #382
snird wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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No, the "other option" is to realize that keeping people in what is effectively little more than a concentration camp with no hope of perspective or solution can only end in violence. Especially if you also start shooting the peaceful protestors like they did a few years ago. And then the government goes in to bed with the most extreme of extreme religious Zionists who quite literally support ethnic cleansing and mur…

According to your logic, Hamas will also inevitably murder thousands of Egyptians as well. No?

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

#419

Post by tmnvix »

sequoia wrote: post #362

I'm disturbed by the idea that an AI could be used to make decisions that could proactively kill someone. (Presumably computer already make decisions that passively kill people by, for example, navigating a self-driving car.) Though there was a human sign-off in this case, it seems one step away from people being killed by robots with zero human intervention which is about one step away from the plot of Terminator. I…

> I wonder what the alternative is in a case like this.

It seems obvious to me that the alternative would be a slower process for picking targets leading to fewer overall targets picked and the guarantee that a human conscience is involved in the process.

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

#420

Post by smt88 »

yonisto wrote: post #307
smt88 wrote: post #21

I know many people won't read past the headline, but please try to. This is the second paragraph: "In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict."

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The whole point of this article (and much of what we've learned in the last few months) is that Israel is clearly not just targeting areas with suspected Hamas activity.

They're using indiscriminate weapons (so not targeting at all!), hitting known UN and humanitarian sites, and killing so ruthlessly that they killed Israeli hostages that made the mistake of being living humans in front of IDF soldiers.

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