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

972mag.com

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

#861

Post by NomDePlum »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #583
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…

I don’t like Lavender. I think humans should always be in the loop. I’d like to see more care by analysts for kill orders. That said, any organization might do something if it’s 90% accurate. Assuming it even is (doubt it), I think any fair evaluation of such a technology must ask: What is the accuracy of inexperienced humans in the same position who are rushing through the review during a blitz invasion? If they hav…

Lavender AI in it's current form is not a technology that should be considered at all for anything close to this. It's incompetent.

Basically AI is being used as a wheel-of-death and nothing more.

Anyone believing differently in my opinion is both delusional, and complicit

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

#862

Post by SZJX »

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.

And again, what would be the reason why a lot of people trying to live a “normal” life feel compelled to take up arms?

Many will call it resistance in an occupied territory in a lot of other contexts.

By this logic when the Nazis killed members of the resistance, of course they were also fighters in addition to whatever day jobs they had.

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

#863

Post by michaelmrose »

goatlover wrote: post #813
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

[flagged]

They are deliberately targeting civilians based on nebulous association knowing they will kill up to 20 others without even that thin justification.

There is absolutely reason to believe such missions could range from 10-50 civilians to one actual soldier.

They are claiming kills as justified that never received human vetting. Even the kills that would be lawful are by any reasonable analysis fruits of a poisonous tree.

Done at scale its hardly different than running a gas chamber.

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

#864

Post by onethought »

koutetsu wrote: post #715
onethought wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given we don’t know what it’s using to identify people we don’t really know any biases. “Holding a military weapon” probably doesn’t contain a whole lot of bias (of course there is misidentification).

Let me quote from the article: > Lavender learns to identify characteristics of known Hamas and PIJ operatives, whose information was fed to the machine as training data, and then to locate these same characteristics — also called “features” — among the general population, the sources explained. An individual found to have several different incriminating features will reach a high rating, and thus automatically becom…

Thank you for repeating what I said. If these features are: “carrying weapon” or “visiting known Hamas military site” - then the risk of unintended bias is lower.

If the features are things like “wears a scarf” or “has a beard” then I agree unintended bias is likely a problem. But given we don’t know. How can we comment?

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

#865

Post by christkv »

__lbracket__ wrote: post #641

Heartbreaking. I seriously wonder if Hamas expected this level of retaliation.

Pretty sure they counted on it and for the Israelis to rush in and get mauled like in Lebanon. Did not work though they took their time instead.

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

#866

Post by DesiLurker »

KETpXDDzR wrote: post #794
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.

this is such BS argument, before guns you could still kill people but it'd take a lot more effort & organization to kill en-masse. same deal if you apply this logic to nukes or missiles. yes those people should be held responsible but there should be a systematic regulation of AI-robot killing machines just like we have geneva accords for cluster munitions or unusually cruel weapons. this is just common sense 101.

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

#867

Post by rightbyte »

monocasa wrote: post #542
rightbyte wrote: post #426

How does this system get the input? Are Palestinians using IDF tapped cell towers? Or is it possible to use roaming towers for this? Is e.g. Google or Facebook involved on a mobile OS or app level? Maybe backdoors local to the area? It seems like the whole cell phone infrastructure need to be torn down.

> Are Palestinians using IDF tapped cell towers? That's my understanding. That the whole of the Gaza strip is essentially watched under the equivalent of stingrays and all traffic out is monitored with room 641a style taps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

That is concerning even if you don't have some lunatics trying to kill you right now.

IMSI seems like a thing that need to be mitigated. We need a FOSS mobile yesterday. Especially when Elon Musk puts cell towers everywhere and most likely give our locations to Washington and by extension Netanyahu.

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

#868

Post by da39a3ee »

I can't read the news because it's so upsetting to watch the world allow a naked genocide, or discuss it with my family. The 7 Nov terrorist attack was disgusting, and since then Israel has proved to the entire world, beyond anyone's remaining doubt,that they are a disgusting nation.

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

#869

Post by thread_id »

It is interesting to see how cell phone data was used as features and inputs to the model (along with other surveilance data). And how the models parameters were adjusted to achieve high leves of correlation. Human behavior regarding sharing cell phones apeared to create a false postive bias. Its too late now but the first thing the entire Palestinian population should have done was to smash all thier phones and go completely dark.

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

#870

Post by gorbachev »

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.…

I'm starting to get convinced the stated objective isn't the objective IDF is really after.

They say the objective is to destroy Hamas and save the hostages.

I think the actual objective is to murder as many palestinians as possible. At the very least that is the actual objective of some IDF soldiers. They've said as much publicly.

Whether or not that's the actual objective intentionally or unintentionally is just arguing semantics at this point.

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