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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

#971

Post by mleonhard »

In 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, SVP Diane Greene, SVP Urs Hölzle, and top engineer Jeff Dean built a system like Lavender for the US military (Project Maven). The US military planned to use it to analyze mass-surveillance drone footage to pick suspects in Pakistan for assassination. They had already dropped bombs on hundreds of houses and vehicles, murdering thousands of suspects and their families and friends [0].

I was working in Urs's Google Technical Infrastructure division. I read about the project in the news. Urs had a meeting about it where he lied to us, saying the contract was only $9M. It had already been expanded to $18M and was on track for $270M. He and Jeff Dean tried to downplay the impact of their work. Jeff Dean blinked constantly (lying?) while downplaying the impact. He suddenly stopped blinking when he began to talk about the technical aspects. I instantly lost all respect for him and the company's leadership.

Strong abilities in engineering and business often do not come with well-developed morals. Sadly, our society is not structured to ensure that leaders have necessary moral education, or remove them when they fail so completely at moral decisions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan

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

#972

Post by colordrops »

mschuster91 wrote: post #625
colordrops wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hamas leadership has stripped its civilian population of the protections of international law. You completely lose any credibility with this statement. Civilians can't be "stripped" of protections of international law.

Oh yes they can, that question has been settled in the aftermath of the Yugoslavian Wars [1, page 148]: > 46. The law is thus clear: a hospital becomes a legitimate target when used for hostile or harmful acts unrelated to its humanitarian function, but the opposing party must give warning before it attacks [1] https://www.icty.org/x/cases/galic/acjug/en/gal-acjud061130....

So pretty much every hospital, school, and over 60% (nearly 300,000) residences have been destroyed in Gaza, leaving well over a million displaced. You are a genocide supporter.

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

#975

Post by thewileyone »

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…

> This specific application and the claimed rationale is as close as I have come to seeing what I consider true and deliberate "Evil application" of technology out in the open.

Someone will double down and include AI into the execution phase via AI controlled drones, tanks, etc. Then they will claim no responsibility and blame the ghost-in-the-shell.

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

#976

Post by slim »

huytersd wrote: post #970
smt88 wrote: post #21

I know many people won't read past the headline, but please try to. This is the second paragraph: "In addition to talking about their use of the AI system, called Lavender, the intelligence sources claim that Israeli military officials permitted large numbers of Palestinian civilians to be killed, particularly during the early weeks and months of the conflict."

Well yeah, they have an “unspoken” 10 to 1 rule about taking 10 Palestinian lives for each Israeli loss.

in the article they say it's explicit and it's 20 to 1 and goes to 100 to 1 for some targets. which makes it obvious it's not a rule but an order of magnitude to estimate the importance of a target. you know like when we use the Fibonacci suite as a measure for the difficulty of a backlog item during the planning game

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

#978

Post by slim »

tstrimple wrote: post #967
slim wrote: post #844

what prevents Lavender from being deployed in EU or US for targeting Hamas operatives abroad ? People would get assassinated randomly and nobody would know why

Israel can freely bomb the shit out of Gaza as much as they want because it's "other" people's blocks and homes being destroyed. Pretty sure the US blanket protection of Israeli war crimes would go away if apartment buildings in Philly started to get leveled as well.

my thinking was going towards more subtil an classical means of asassination like poison, car accidents, simulated suicides...

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

#979

Post by skinkestek »

elygre wrote: post #877
skinkestek wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To avoid a back and forth here, people should feel free to find a way to analyse the confidence levels that newspapers use when quoting the different sides.

- what entities are quoted using netral or confidence signaling language like "sier" (says), "i følge" (according to) and similar, "data fra" (data from)

- what entities are quoted using language that gives low trust connotations: "påstår" (claims, but in Norwegian signalling low confidence)

Feel free to also compare how the claimed Israeli bombing of a hospital early during Israels response affected the front pages, vs when it became clear that it was a rocket engine from Gaza that had hit a mostly empty parking lot ourside a hospital and left a dent in the asphalt.

Since I argue in good faith I also encourage you elygre to provide similar ways to try to get something measurable to show your perspective.

I pride myself (for the lack of a better term) with being able to change my views based on listening to others and have done so both when it comes to drug policies (I have gone from very strict to liberal), economics (I used to be anti socialism, now I have come to appreciate and defend our current Norwegian system very much), and I used to defend Israel in ways that I don't do anymore.

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

#980

Post by NomDePlum »

fsflover wrote: post #871
KETpXDDzR wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Both can (and are) true.
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