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

972mag.com

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611
post #158

> “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs]” At that point I had to scroll back up to check whether this was just a really twisted April's Fools joke.

What part of this upsets you vs a baseline understanding of reality? There's often a criticism of the US military doctrine that our weapons are great but are often way more expensive than the thing we shoot them at (as exemplified in our engagement with the Houthis in the Red Sea.) If anything, the quote you pulled sounds like its talking about highly precise weaponry, and it seems to me that the way to minimize the…

I know war isn't pretty, but I really didn't expect that openly displayed level of callousness. Saying 'we think these people should be dead, but they are not important enough to warrant our "good" bombs', to me, says a lot about the mentality of the people in charge of that military assault: those aren't human lives, those are items on a 'to kill' list, and they aren't surrounded by civilians, but 'acceptable collateral damage'.

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

#612
The sad and simple truth (trying to not sound political, but it's pretty damned hard given the context) is that it seems that not so long ago, lists and very flimsy justifications were at the root of a lot of pain and suffering for the very people perpetrating the same.

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

#613

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…

>> Comparing against some imaginary scenario where cars have no collisions and cause no deaths doesn't make sense.

That's not the whole story. For example, we ban certain kinds of weapons -cluster munitions, chemical weapons, biological weapons, ideally we'd ban bloody mines- not because they kill too many people compared to "conventional" weapons (they don't) but because they are considered especially ... well, wrong, in the moral sense.

So maybe we decide that being killed by a machine, that decides you're a target and pulls the trigger autonomously is especially morally wrong and we don't accept it.

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

#614

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…

There would have been slower target selection.

A lot of news around the bombing called out the uniquely large scale and rapidity of the campaign.

This was a preview of future conflicts.

We're entering the WWI phase of new technology being brought without rules to conflicts where the abuses will be horrific until rules are finally put in place.

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

#615
post #570

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…

[flagged]

When this latest series of attacks started there was still some room to charitably interpret what the IDF had to deal with, but we've had months of constant action and very obvious suffering and death that the IDF has been imposing upon Gaza, either intentionally or through sheer apathy. They've long since lost the "oh but think critically" excuse. The amount of suffering they are inflicting is not at all justified, it has gone far beyond just a tit-for-tat retaliation.

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. Okay, how is this not a war crime? There are ~2M civilians who live in Gaza, and many of them don't have access to food, water, medicine, or safe shelter. Some of those unfortunates live above, or below, Hamas operatives and their families. "Oh, sorry, lol." "It was unintentional, lmao, seriously." "Our doctrine states that we can kill X civilians for every hostile operativ…

> Okay, how is this not a war crime? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Some questions worth asking: what is international law? How is international order maintained? I agree that images and footage from Gaza are disturbing. But I encourage you to think systematically about what it is we are seeing.

I’ve thought about it systematically and it appears to be genocide

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

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> What can one do when criminals have embedded them self in the civilian population? Why don't they get out and meet the police on the battle field? We wouldn't tolerate a SWAT team blowing up a hospital if the mafia had taken over the basement, I have no idea why you think this is acceptable. > It is much better than the carpet bombing used by other nations. It is exactly like the carpet bombing used by other nation…

Would Israel blow an israeli hospital if Hamas took the basement?

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

#618
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone else is a civilian that can only be directly targeted when and for as long as they directly participate in hostilities, such as by taking up arms, planning military operations, laying down mines, etc. There is some incredible magic that often happens: as soon as anyone is targeted and killed, they immediately transform from civilians to "collaborators", "terrorists", "militants" etc. Of course everything i…

In Norway it is rather the other way: We all know (if we stop and think) that a person can be both a teacher and a terrorist. But according to media here almost every victim except top Hamas brass seems to be referred to by their whatever else they were besides terrorists and the terrorists (or even just soldier) part get hushed down.

Maybe it's because the overwhelming majority of the people being killed are actually just regular people?

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

#619

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…

> Only those who have the "continuous function" to "directly participate in hostilities"[1] may be targeted for attack at any time. The problem with Hamas is that they don't shy away from hiding combattants in civilian clothings or use women and children as suicide bombers. There is more than enough evidence of this tactic, dating back many many years [1]. By not just not preventing, but actively ordering such war cr…

> Hamas leadership has stripped its civilian population of the protections of international law.

You completely lose any credibility with this statement. Civilians can't be "stripped" of protections of international law.

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

#620

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…

Look I know this is gonna sound cliche but the thing they should do is not engage in an offensive asymmetrical war and bomb a dense urban area full of innocents for basically no reason. Then they wouldn’t need the little ai.

This is obviously veering way off course of the topic of AI at this point, but I imagine the residents of kibbutz be'eri and the 100+ hostages still held in Gaza would disagree that Isreal is fighting for "basically no reason." I'm interested in analysis and criticism of Israel's use of AI in this case but suggesting Israel has no causus belli is absurd.
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