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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

#661

Post by ein0p »

jiggawatts wrote: post #642
rdtsc wrote: 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…

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…

Children and women do not shoot up tanks

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

#662

Post by CatWChainsaw »

Qem wrote: post #331
surfingdino wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always starts with making a list of targets that meet given criteria. Once you have the list its use changes from categorisation to demonisation -> surveillance -> denial of rights -> deportations -> killing. Early use of computers by Germans during WW2 included making and processing of lists of people who ought to be sent to concentration camps. The only difference today is that we are able to capture more data a…

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

In the future, AI will be so good that it will detect criticism of IBM as you are typing and threaten to lock you out of "your" computer unless you delete your work.

Either that or genAI will be used to publish a bunch of books telling fantasy stories about how IBM personally arrested Hitler. :)

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

#663

Post by pvaldes »

solardev wrote: post #440
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…

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.

when a computer program designed by a human "makes" the decision, humans can claim that it was "a funny mistake", it was not their fault and pretend to be very sad for it.

Having a human to make those decisions is better because this human can be judged if commits war crimes or genocide or violates international war laws.

A computer can't be jailed and this is the real power of designing this system. To hide the criminals on a black box so nobody can be made responsible

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

#664

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

edanm wrote: post #514
smt88 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you think they should have autonomy and a democratic state, which most of the world also agrees with.

I think the implication is that Gaza does have semi-autonomy (it is a complicated situation - there's a blockade, but it has security autonomy within its region. Or did before October 7th). And Gaza was pushed towards democratic elections, which they held, elected Hamas, and Hamas hasn't permitted a democracy since then.

After Hamas was elected in 2006, in elections deemed democratic and fair by international observers (Jimmy Carter's organisation, The Carter Center) the US government at the time armed and trained a Fatah faction to stage a coup, that backfired, leaving Hamas in control of Gaza.

Ever since that, there has been constant interference with Hamas' government, including multiple military campaigns by Israel - in "Operations" Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense, Swords of Iron and I forget which others, Wikipedia has a timeline [1].

Basically, ever since the election, Gaza has been under attack every few months or years. Hamas probably weren't in a great hurry to have elections, although it should be noted that their ideology is to take power democratically and not through power of arms [2]. In any case, they're in a constant state of war and it's hard to hold democratic elections under the circumstances. Netanyahu has used the same excuse, repeatedly, to avoid being kicked out of government in the current crisis.

Btw, all that about the interference with the democratic process in Gaza after Hamas' election is on wikipedia [3] (meaning it's easy to get a first idea of what happened; then you can check their sources).

_________________

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict#2...

[2] I don't have a reference for that handy. Ask and ye shall be given but I'll have to dig a bit.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_e...

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

#665

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

ein0p wrote: post #661
jiggawatts wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Children and women do not shoot up tanks

[flagged]

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

#666

Post by singleshot_ »

jiggawatts wrote: post #642
rdtsc wrote: 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…

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…

While perfidy is a violation of the law of war, summary execution is not a generally-acceptable penalty under IHL.

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

#667

Post by gizmondo »

tmnvix wrote: post #478

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.…

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

Their invasion of the Gaza city went way better than expected by most analysts, with minimal casualties among Israeli. So probably? Hard to compare with the alternative reality where they select the targets the old way.

That their stated objectives are likely unachievable is a different issue.

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

#669

Post by stevenhuang »

__loam wrote: post #378
kjkjadksj wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people working on these understand the alternative looks like a WWII bombing campaign with greater loss of life

Not to be combative with the response here, but the density of destruction in Gaza is on par with the likes of Dresden. It's not really exaggeration to say that Gaza is one of the most bombed places since Vietnam, and you don't have to take anyone's word for it. You can go to companies like Maxor and purchase satellite images on the open market and see for yourself.

The ratio of civilian deaths to military combatants seem to indicate a different picture: https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...

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

#670

Post by stevenwoo »

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

It's certainly possible for what you write to be true, and the video we've seen from other targeted killings indicates that even an entire human chain of command could have missed the logos on the car, off the top of my head the USA example is when we attacked a wedding party in Afghanistan because it was close to a combat zone. But it sounds like the rules of engagement give IDF the leeway to kill up to 15 non combatants in any situation for one AI identified male in targeted age group and 100 if the male matches a high value target, which seems incredibly broad. It's all a moot point for the victims, and the IDF killing hostages with their hands in the air sounds like it's kind of out of control but could be sampling bias since reporters are being killed at a pretty high rate as well.
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