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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

#871

Post by fsflover »

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.

That's like saying "defibrillators don't save people, people save people".

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

#872

Post by cad31 »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #823
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…

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

#873

Post by cess11 »

zip1234 wrote: post #759
quandrum wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Hamas, the US and Israel are the primary weapon manufacturer, as unexploded ordinance is the primary source of their explosives. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hamas-is-using-unexplo...

It is not the primary source of their weapons, nor is it the primary source of their explosives. It might be "a primary source" now as your linked article mentions, but certainly not THE primary source. Hamas is primarily given weapons by Iran.

They claim to be producing a lot of them locally in the Gaza strip, based on russian or iranian design. They've proudly showed videos of factories producing al-Ghoul rifles, Tandem anti-tank grenades, light artillery grenades, rifle ammunition.

This is an explicit ideal in the 'Resistance Axis', to develop the ability to produce military equipment locally and not be dependent on brittle trade routes or smuggling.

The West Bank seems to get rifles from several sources, both american style that probably comes from PA or IDF and russian style, probably smuggled through Jordan from Iraq, Iran, Russia. They produce IED:s locally, quite crude ones, not the directed type with concave copper plates favoured by iraqi militias. Eventually they'll learn to make those too, I'm sure.

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

#874

Post by AdamN »

NomDePlum wrote: post #858
Buttons840 wrote: post #825

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line gets blurred a little here though. I give you a gun and say "shoot whoever you choose with this gun, the choice is yours". I give you an AI powered gun and say "use this however you choose, I have programmed it to automatically shoot in certain circumstances". In the latter case, I have some responsibility, because I shared in the decision making by programming the gun. Through my code I have put my proverbi…

Why don't you have responsibilities in both scenario

Exactly - the safest thing to do with the AI gun is not point it anybody and destroy it. Perhaps the AI gun shooting somebody wouldn't be an intentional murder but it's certainly manslaughter since you know that it could shoot whoever it's pointing at so simply pointing it at anybody is the active decision that frames the crime.

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

#875

Post by flawn »

rozap wrote: post #291
rowanseymour wrote: post #34

As bad as this story makes the Israelis sound, it still reads like ass-covering to make it sound like they were at least trying to kill militants. It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution, with the goal of rendering life in Gaza impossible.

Yea this really seems like more of a weapon of propaganda directed at Israelis. If they didn't want people to know about it, we probably wouldn't know about it. The fact that we're talking about it is probably not an accident, and I guess the play here would be to convince Israelis that the army is technologically advanced and they know what they're doing, so don't question it. But AI or not they were going to commit…

I don't know if this was really planned. With my best will, I cannot imagine the Israeli military & Netanyahu's government releasing this to cover their ass. This could be potentially something which worsens their actions and not lessen them.

Obviously, nobody in an international court will be able to say "... but the AI did it!" - This is just far too easy as a way out. There are rules to AI Usage and one of them is not a usage like that - as already said somewhere else: The AI is only as ethical/moral as the humans behind them.

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

#876

Post by cad31 »

thread_id wrote: post #869

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 c…

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

#877

Post by elygre »

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.

This is probably obvious, but just to make sure: This is the opinion of skinkestek, and not an objective truth. As another Norwegian, I do not share this opinion.

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

#878

Post by AdamN »

hightrix wrote: post #755
mupuff1234 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been clear from the start that they've been targeting journalists, medical staff and anyone involved in aid distribution I really doubt that's the case, seems more like a "fire first if any suspicion at all and ask questions later" policy. If there was an intentional policy to kills journalists, aid workers and medical staff you'd see a lot more dead. And you have to be extremely naive or one sided to not real…

> I really doubt that's the case It is. The IDF shot once, then when a vehicle came to rescue survivors, they shot again. Then the third attempt at rescueing survivors, they shot a third time. Purposefully murdering aid workers that coordinated with the IDF before entering the area. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/idf-strike-on-gaza-aid-... “…were traveling in a convoy that had been coordinated with the Israel D…

That's not really a rebuttal - the entire convoy was (incorrectly) identified as a target. If they were actually military it certainly would make sense to kill the targets one by one as it's hard to target simultaneously.

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

#879

Post by neuronic »

Next step is to automate this entire chain. Not far away from some military deploying fully autonomous identify, target & kill systems now. The pieces are all in place. Human rights and oversight are not the first priority in all militaries.

AI system says person X in location Y needs to be taken out due to "terrorist association". Check if location Y is cleared for operations. Command has given general authority for operations in this region.

An autonomous drone is deployed like a Patriot missile shooting out from some array into the night sky, quietly flies to location Y, identifies precise GPS coordinates and sends itself including a sizeable warhead into the target. Later, some office dude sits down at his desk at 8:30am, opens some reporting program.

"Ah, 36 kills last night." Takes a sip of coffee.

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

#880

Post by surume »

+972 magazine is EXTREMELY anti-Israel and anti-semitic, so this article is written through the lens of despising Israel and Jews. Here are some of their other article titles, which you can find on their home page:

1. Hebrew University’s Faculty of Repressive Science 2. The spiraling absurdity of Germany’s pro-Israel fanaticism 3. The first step toward disintegrating Israel’s settler machine

As such, their view is not at all balanced or even-handed. Objective truth obviously matters very little to them since they exhibit such open bias and loathing towards Israel and the Jewish people.

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