Heartbreaking. I seriously wonder if Hamas expected this level of retaliation.
'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
641–650 of 1001 posts
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#642Years 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…
> 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…
On the flip side, in this war many of the Gaza combatants are either irregular forces or militants deliberately wearing civilian clothing.
So if some guy in a track suit and flip-flops uses an anti tank grenade launcher, discards the empty tube, walks away, and gets lit up, then the next day the Internet is awash with videos of the “IDF murdering a civilian!”
For reference, I think both sides are in the wrong in this conflict, and Israel more than Gaza.
However, the Internet is full of armchair international law experts that are being played like a fiddle by Hamas’ propaganda arm.
Speaking of international laws of combat: no protections apply to non-uniformed combatants pretending to be civilians. None. They can be tortured, executed on the spot, whatever.
If you want protections to apply to you, then wear a uniform or never go anywhere near a gun.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#643> “Where’s Daddy?” also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences. That is appalling.
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Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#644> “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
Isn’t a military person a legitimate target at the time of the war? I think it is, the issue is the collateral damage. But then again this war shows that Hamas is also not following the rules and gets too close to civilians.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 whi…
The astroturfing from pro-Israel parties on social media is incredible, but nothing beats the Reddit situation.
I was just browsing /r/ukpolitics just now, and it is mind boggling how many pro-Israel comments come from people that apparently are only commenting about that topic. No activity whatsoever on popular subs, on hobby subs, but instead their entire posting history is composed of months and months of tirelessly defending the state of Israel.
Sounds like work, and it seems that many forgot about the Mossad-operated propaganda farms that made the news a decade ago. Most people are so blind to propaganda that these fake personas do not even have to be particularly subtle about it.
It would be so easy to identify these paid state actors with some simple code, but I do not want to give ammunition to those other cretins that would use such a tool to target Jewish people as a whole; so I just notice the propaganda and move on.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#646Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#647Earlier 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…
Ideally, that would be "Computer says we shouldn't kill these people, let's not".
It’s a very powerful drug to be able to shrug your shoulders and say you were just doing as you were told.
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#648I am reminded of Poindexter's[1] total information awareness project, which I thought at the time too interesting for it to wholly disappear. I must admit this knowledge influenced one or two of my own blog postings on what I call "Strategic Software"[2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness [2]: https://blog.eutopian.io/tags/strategic-software/
Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#649Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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,…
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Re: 'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel's bombing in Gaza
#650As someone working in the AI field, I find this use of AI truly terrifying. Today it may be used to target Hamas and accept a relatively large number of civilian deaths as permissible collateral damage, but nothing guarantees that it won't be exported and used somewhere else. On top of that, I don't think anything is done to alleviate biases in the data (if you're used to target people from a certain group then your AI system will still target people from that group) or validate the predictions after a "target" is bombed. I wish there was more regulations for these use cases. Too bad the EU AI Act doesn't address military uses at all.