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

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

#471

Post by dang »

bitcharmer wrote: post #131
oliwarner wrote: post #123

HN 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.

This is not new and dang and the others are absolutely fine with posts getting gang-flagged in a matter of minutes. Just shows how impartial they are.

I've written a lot about how we approach this. If you or anyone would like to know more, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39920732 in this thread and the links back from there.

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

#473

Post by artificial »

cm2187 wrote: post #465
solardev wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is having a human make those decisions really better? It was humans who ordered the Holocaust, My Lai, Wounded Knee, Rwanda, Tiananmen, etc. At least AI pretends to look at some data instead of just defaulting to tribal bloodlust... who's to say it can't be more ethical? It doesn't take much to beat our track record.

I think people are worried no one really understands how AI picks the target. Reminds me of that story from probably 5-7y ago. Someone wanted to use AI to classify photos of tanks as soviet vs US. So he went to a US tank museum and took lots of pictures of the tanks under every angle. Did the same in a soviet tank museum. The resulting model worked great on that training dataset. Then he tried on photos outside of th…

Seems like segmentation would be a better approach to identity objects in a photo rather than various other features.

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

#474

Post by mupuff1234 »

rowanseymour wrote: post #34

As 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.

> It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution

I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy. If there was an intentional policy to kills journalists, aid workers and medical staff you'd see a lot more dead.

And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not realize that Hamas does use those type of roles as cover for their operations.

Not trying to justify Israel's actions because they are fucked up, but based on all the evidence we have you are clearly wrong.

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

#477

Post by zelphirkalt »

tsujamin wrote: post #124
skilled wrote: post #103

The Guardian has this story on the front page also, they were given details about it pre-publishing, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai... And, personally, I think that stories like this are of public interest - while I won’t ask for it directly, I hope the flag is removed and the discussion can happen.

Pretty disappointing that Guardian article also got quickly flagged after HN submission

The feeling I got during the last months here when there are articles about this war is, that there are either many Israelis here flagging anything that makes Israel look bad, or many Americans, who somehow feel allegiance to Israel and think that this ever was about a good cause.

On the other hand of course there are also those that jump on any claim that makes Israel look bad. Claims of which there are many. Of which far too many have become pretty evident. Which far too many people do not want to be true and will ignore.

So what can one do? I guess keep an open mind and give claims a couple of days to be proven or disproven. Only then judge.

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

#478

Post by tmnvix »

Given the total failure to achieve any of its stated objectives, has this use of AI benefited the IDF at all?

I would argue that it's likely the only outcome it has had that directly relates to IDF objectives has probably been negative (i.e. the unintended killing of hostages).

Sadly, I think that the continued use of this AI is supported because it is helping to provide cover for individuals involved in war crimes. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI really weren't very sophisticated at all and that to serve the purpose of cover that doesn't matter.

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

#479

Post by machina_ex_deus »

hnav wrote: post #464
machina_ex_deus wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

9/11 killed 3k people

3k out of 300 million, so 1 in 10000.

1k out of 8 million is 1 out of 8000.

Every person in Israel knows someone who knows a victim personally. Think how deep this trauma is to Israel.

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

#480

Post by ben_w »

cm2187 wrote: post #465
solardev wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is having a human make those decisions really better? It was humans who ordered the Holocaust, My Lai, Wounded Knee, Rwanda, Tiananmen, etc. At least AI pretends to look at some data instead of just defaulting to tribal bloodlust... who's to say it can't be more ethical? It doesn't take much to beat our track record.

I think people are worried no one really understands how AI picks the target. Reminds me of that story from probably 5-7y ago. Someone wanted to use AI to classify photos of tanks as soviet vs US. So he went to a US tank museum and took lots of pictures of the tanks under every angle. Did the same in a soviet tank museum. The resulting model worked great on that training dataset. Then he tried on photos outside of th…

An eternal story; I heard the same thing at university 22 years ago, except then it was NATO taking nice crisp in-focus photos of their own tanks from close up, while the images of Soviet tanks were all blurry and grainy because they came from high-altitude spy planes.

(This kind of human model hallucination is how and why I think Genesis got written and taken seriously).

https://gwern.net/tank

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