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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

#791

Post by Chilko »

screye wrote: post #598

Technology like this raises a moral conundrum. Minimizing deaths is the humane approach to war. So we move away from broad killing mechanisms (shelling, crude explosives, carpet bombing), in favor of precise killing machines. Drones, targeted missiles and now AI allow you to be ruthlessly efficient in killing an enemy. The question is - How cold and not-human-like can these methods be, if they are in fact reducing ov…

> Drones, targeted missiles and now AI allow you to be ruthlessly efficient in killing an enemy

I understand what you are getting at, but if you read the article this is not how this technology is being used, rather the opposite. The AI seems to use very broad criteria / flimsy evidence to decide who is a target, and then it is chosen to strike them specifically when they get home and would typically be surrounded by civilians (mostly women and children).

Their own testing showed 1 in 10 selected targets were not actually militants, but because it is statistically 'correct' (despite loose definitions of correct) 90% of the time all targets will be bombed. Add the fact that collateral damage of 15-20 civilians is accepted even for the lowest ranking militants (and much higher for commanders) who are then targeted with unguided munitions, which makes this quite a lot less 'targeted' and 'efficient' than e.g. US drone strikes in Afghanistan.

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

#792

Post by davgoldin »

dang wrote: post #278
wantlotsofcurry wrote: post #137

Upsetting how quickly the other thread was flagged and downranked.

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…

The article makes some hard to digest claims, for example:

> According to six Israeli intelligence officers

Not 1 reservist, or 2 retired officers, or 3 contractors, but 6 active serviceman - whose day to day job is to figure out how to hide secrets.

There are more statistically impossible statements.

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

#793

Post by solarpunk »

theyinwhy wrote: post #450
treyd wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure would be nice if this industry had the tiniest shred of collective consciousness and realized our capacity to exert some level of control over what gets built and what doesn't.

Lots of us are IEEE members bound to ethical standards: https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html There are also numerous other organisations with such standards.

this made me curious if the ACM has something similar, sure enough: https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

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

#794

Post by KETpXDDzR »

NomDePlum wrote: post #789

Never thought I'd even consider this, but is this a case where those involved, producing and developing, this software should be tried for murder/crimes against humanity? My understanding is that AI in it's current form is not an applicable technology to be anywhere near this type of use. Again my understanding: Inference models by their very nature are largely non-deterministic, in terms of being able to evaluate ac…

Guns/AI don't kill people. People do. If someone should be held responsible, it's the people that order the strikes.

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

#795

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#796

Post by hackerlight »

batch12 wrote: post #761
darkerside wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having to take a few deep breaths before responding to some of these comments. The difference is Accountability. A computer can't be held accountable and a person can. Full stop. It makes all the difference.

The person operating the computer or building the AI could be held accountable though.

You could get a bystander effect kind of dilution of responsibility, even if unintentionally. Everyone points to someone else which is a system of incentives that enables bad things to happen. The buck always stops with the leadership, but you still want well-defined blame at the decision maker level that's transparent to everyone while decisions are being made.

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

#797

Post by thisiszilff »

NomDePlum wrote: post #789

Never thought I'd even consider this, but is this a case where those involved, producing and developing, this software should be tried for murder/crimes against humanity? My understanding is that AI in it's current form is not an applicable technology to be anywhere near this type of use. Again my understanding: Inference models by their very nature are largely non-deterministic, in terms of being able to evaluate ac…

Depends on what "AI" means here. There is a spectrum of "we have a bunch of data in a database and some folks hand tuning queries" to "we built a deep learning network to predict XYZ." In the middle of that spectrum lie things like decision trees which provide explainable results.

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

#798

Post by 2-3-7-43-1807 »

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

#799

Post by NomDePlum »

skinkestek wrote: post #543
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…

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.

Can you site an example of this please?

It's contradictory to my understanding of what is happening.

By that, I mean, when the few remaining police left in Northern Gaza, who had reported to be critical to providing security for aid deliveries (and involved in coordination with Israel) where assassinated recently by Israel, and claimed as high ranking Hamas targets it pretty much cemented my opinion that nothing is true, or believable from Israel in this conflict.

How are you defining terrorist here as well? As other than the horrific events of October 7th, and the hostages from that day, the only visible acts of violence and terror associated with Palestine appear to be towards anyone Palestinian, journalists, aid workers and medical staff.

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

#800

Post by tmnvix »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #711
forgetfreeman wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> war crimes trials What is the alleged war crime in using a machine for target filtration?

It's only 'filtration' if selecting from from a list of targets. This sounds more like selecting targets from a group of people generally.
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