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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

#571

Post by 0x457 »

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…

This system bassicaly just gave everyone a score from 1 to 100 of how luckely they are part the military wing of hamas.

Another system would signal that target is at home and it's time to bomb. This system was using phone to geo-locate and due to nature of living in Gaza phones transfer hands often.

Without Lavender they would have dropped less bombs IMO.

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

#572

Post by Qem »

stefan_ wrote: post #517
nerfbatplz wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haaretz reports that the ground troops in Gaza are acting on their own and in a state of anarchy. https://archive.is/2024.04.02-205352/https://www.haaretz.com...

So like ground troops in every war, ever? There’s a whole school of thought around having the boots on the ground make their own in the moment decisions.

> There’s a whole school of thought around having the boots on the ground make their own in the moment decisions.

So when the war crimes trial happens the higher ups can throw their subordinates under the bus and claim ignorance. The Nuremberg defense was about blaming superiors. I wonder if the reverse, blaming subordinates and computers will be known as Hague defense, after the apartheid officers in Tel Aviv are taken to court. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

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

#573

Post by hluska »

solarpunk wrote: post #339
CommieBobDole wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also interesting (and I guess typical for end-users of software) how quickly and easily something like this goes from "Here's a tool you can use as an information input when deciding who to target" to "I dunno, computer says these are the people we need to kill, let's get to it". In the Guardian article, an IDF spokesperson says it exists and is only used as the former, and I'm sure that's what was intended and…

20 second turnaround from target acquisition to strikes seems to guarantee it's become the latter.

Do you have enough military experience to say this? Or are you just guessing?

I’ll guarantee that it’s the latter.

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

#574

Post by someotherperson »

monocasa wrote: post #542
rightbyte wrote: post #426

How does this system get the input? Are Palestinians using IDF tapped cell towers? Or is it possible to use roaming towers for this? Is e.g. Google or Facebook involved on a mobile OS or app level? Maybe backdoors local to the area? It seems like the whole cell phone infrastructure need to be torn down.

> Are Palestinians using IDF tapped cell towers? That's my understanding. That the whole of the Gaza strip is essentially watched under the equivalent of stingrays and all traffic out is monitored with room 641a style taps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Hmm, I wonder if that is related to why the use of 3G barely just rolled out and why they still aren't allowed to have 4G. Maybe that would require an upgrade of Stringray-like equipment?

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

#575

Post by firtoz »

> The following investigation is organized according to the six chronological stages of the Israeli army’s highly automated target production in the early weeks of the Gaza war. First, we explain the Lavender machine itself, which marked tens of thousands of Palestinians using AI. Second, we reveal the “Where’s Daddy?” system, which tracked these targets and signaled to the army when they entered their family homes. Third, we describe how “dumb” bombs were chosen to strike these homes.

> Fourth, we explain how the army loosened the permitted number of civilians who could be killed during the bombing of a target. Fifth, we note how automated software inaccurately calculated the amount of non-combatants in each household. And sixth, we show how on several occasions, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all, because military officers did not verify the information in real time.

Tbh this feels like making a machine that points at a random point on the map by rolling two sets of dice, and then yelling "more blood for the blood god" before throwing a cluster bomb

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

#576

Post by _blk »

Quanttek wrote: post #108

Years ago, scholars (such as Didier Bigo) have already raised concerns about the targeting of individuals merely based on (indirect) association with a "terrorist" or "criminal". Originally used in the context of surveillance (see Snowden revelations), such systems would target anyone who would be e.g. less than 3-steps away from an identified individual, thereby removing any sense of due process or targeted surveill…

[flagged]

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

#577

Post by Sleepful »

imjonse wrote: post #355
Qem wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's even books written about it. Shame on IBM for this. I suspect in the future we'll have lots of books like this, for other companies enabling this genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

The same author wrote Nazi Nexus, with separate chapters for different US companies' (Ford, GM) dealings with the Nazi regime. It can always be a case of "let's not bring politics into work" attitude or the belief that "tech is a tool only, can be used for good or ill" but at least in the years leading up to WW2 there was a lot of support for eugenics, antisemitism (Henry Ford was a notorious one) and other Nazi tend…

Operation Paperclip et al

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

#578

Post by dudeinhawaii »

2devnull wrote: post #36

Probably going to be flame city in this thread, but I think it’s worth asking: is it possible that even with collateral damage (killing women and children because of hallucinations) that AI based killing technology is actually more ethical and safer than warfare that doesn’t use AI. But AI is really just another name for math, so maybe it’s not a useful conversation. Militaries use advanced tech and that’s nothing ne…

This is a bizarre take. I've seen it multiple times, in multiple threads now. Somehow your only options are "kill women and children" in large amounts or carpet bomb. I feel like there are dozens, if not hundreds of other options if anyone gave a damn.

Ultimately, it's a calculus of "us vs them" and which lives are valued or devalued.

Relatedly, are police justified when they shoot at a house with 500 rounds, killing the suspect and their entire family that happened to be in the general vicinity? Is the math "one law enforcement > n lives as long as one was a (potential) badguy"?

If you wanted to do this with minimal civilian casualties, then you bring the ground forces in, block by block, and you clear things the old-fashioned way. You take casualties, but those are casualties who signed up to be "warfighters".

Now this IS inflamatory: I think we have a lot of warfighters and cops who are just plain cowards, that's the mentality. Why have a class of trained and armed people who are so afraid of dying that they'd rather kill anything and everything in their path than potentially be injured or killed?

I thought the ethos of the warfighter and law enforcement was "act as a shield, act as a bulwark, save lives, give my life so that others may be free, etc etc". Nowadays its "nah I'm not going in that school, there's badguys with guns and I might die, just stay outside".

That leads to a failure of imagination where somehow "blow up a building with innocent people as long as you got your target" seems somehow justified because you didn't risk a 'good guy' life. Cowardice.

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

#579

Post by dang »

frob wrote: post #560
dang wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a typical phenomenon when a topic is divisive, and the Israel/Gaza topic is one of the most divisive. Edit: We sometimes turn off flags when an article contains significant new information and also has at least some chance of providing a substantive basis for discussion. I haven't read the current article yet but it seems like a reasonable candidate for this, so I turned off the flags. For anyone who wants mo…

Seeing as these discussions are always insta-flagged and you need to revive them to allow for discussion, have you considered adding 'Israel' and 'Palestine to a set of keywords you need to approve to be set as flagged instead of letting automation take over? Having a human in the loop prevents bad-faith actors from abusing the system to suppress information and discussions.

I think we probably already see the most important ones, such as the one today. If there's an article that particularly deserves having the flags turned off, people can always bring it to our attention at hn@ycombinator.com.

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

#580

Post by [deleted] »

tmnvix wrote: post #419
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.

[deleted]
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