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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

#691

Post by selimthegrim »

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…

The weird thing is, I’ve seen this author post factually incorrect things about early Islamic history. I just wish he was more careful about things outside his area of expertise.

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

#692

Post by flyinglizard »

emadabdulrahim wrote: post #630
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…

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

#693

Post by C6JEsQeQa5fCjE »

sequoia wrote: post #620
BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never understood why the argument that only war can bring hostages back, or that it is the most reliable way, was allowed to be propagated in public for so long.

> 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."

On the contrary, I think that those exact people would agree the most. Do you think that they do not wish that Israel did a hostage exchange instead of starving and bombing them together with their captors? To bring the "low hanging fruit" example, do you think that the three hostages who were waving white flags nearly entirely naked, and who were subsequently murdered by the IDF; do you think that they or their families prefer(preferred) this devastation that lead to their deaths instead of a simple hostage exchange?

What do you think would happen if IDF killed most of Hamas and had their last few forces cornered with no escape, and were getting close to them? Do you think the hostages would not be killed by either their captors or by IDF as collateral damage in such a scenario?

Claims that the systematic destruction of Gaza and genocide(-lite?) serves the goal of bringing back the hostages is such an obvious cover for bloodthirst that it is honestly intellectually-insulting to keep reading it over and over again.

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

#694

Post by lozenge »

sequoia wrote: post #396
readyplayeremma wrote: post #371

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…

I think 90 percent accuracy in this case means 10 percent of "suggested terrorists" were overturned with detailed human review. There's no way the Israelis were actually able to reliably question the Gazans about whether they really were terrorists.

So the issue isn't that there's errors, it's that the army knows there are errors and expect humans to pick them out in 20 seconds- which they know realistically won't happen. The human only has two realistic choices- approve every target, or disapprove every target (which gets you reassigned to another role).

It's the classic statistics case of two medical diagnostics for an underlying value that isn't directly observable.

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

#695

Post by flyinglizard »

In October 7th, by murdering, raping and abducting 1200 Israel civilians, Hamas - the acting sovereign of Gaza - chose total war. I hope this serves as a lesson to all those in Iran, Iraq, Syria and especially Lebanon who think of about repeating this.

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

#697

Post by flyinglizard »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #689
fhd2 wrote: post #682

> 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 [...] Brings the Ironies of Automation paper to mind: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation Specifically: If _most_ of a task is automated, human oversight becomes near useless…

Nothing a few rounds of war crimes trials, complete with gallows, in the Hague won't sort out, especially if the court decided (oh I can dream) that the execs and major investors of the company that implemented the system are culpable.

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

#698

Post by oliwarner »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #488
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.

Which war crime was committed? https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml

At least a dozen counts of Article 8 2.b.

Only allowing 20 seconds to verify that you are male (nothing else). Intentional night bombings to increase the chance of hitting your target, but ignoring that you're hitting a residential, killing a target's family and neighbours by association. Programming in a allowable "10% error rate", which looks more like a success rate when you factor in collateral. These aren't acceptable in war. If this is news, you need to read the article.

There are, of course, many other concerns with Israeli conduct in and around Gaza.

I agree that war is a dirty process, but trying to differentiate this from genocide is increasingly tough.

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

#699

Post by Qem »

I wonder if the name Israelis gave the system betray their intent. I noticed in Portuguese, our word for Lavender, "lavanda", sounds similar to the verb meaning to wash, "lavar". According to wikipedia[1] it goes back to old latin roots: "The English word lavender came into use in the 13th century, and is generally thought to derive from Old French lavandre, ultimately from Latin lavare from lavo (to wash), referring to the use of blue infusions of the plants." I belive it is the same root behind English words like laundry or laundering. So, naming it 'Lavender' appears to give a clue to its true purpose: Laundering, our whitewashing the mass scale killing of civilians as collateral damage from computer-targeted strikes against militants, automating and streamlining the creation of plausible sounding excuses to provide cover for mass commitment of criminal acts.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavandula

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

#700

Post by kobayashi »

lozenge wrote: post #683
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…

"I'm sure that's what was intended" Intended by who? You don't kill 13,000 children by accident.

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