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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

#671

Post by leptons »

ein0p wrote: post #661
jiggawatts wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, in this war many of the Gaza combatants are either irregular forces or militants deliberately wearing civilian clothing. So if some guy in a track suit and flip-flops uses an anti tank grenade launcher, discards the empty tube, walks away, and gets lit up, then the next day the Internet is awash with videos of the “IDF murdering a civilian!” For reference, I think both sides are in the wrong in this…

Children and women do not shoot up tanks

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

#673

Post by worddepress »

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.

[flagged]

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

#674

Post by mandmandam »

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.

OP didn't say Israel is fighting for basically no reason.

You're twisting their words, I'll assume out of a misreading. Read the comment again. They clearly said that there's no good reason to bomb Gaza the way that they have been doing, resulting in the murder of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of civilians.

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

#675

Post by jmyeet »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #477
tsujamin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty disappointing that Guardian article also got quickly flagged after HN submission

The feeling I got during the last months here when there are articles about this war is, that there are either many Israelis here flagging anything that makes Israel look bad, or many Americans, who somehow feel allegiance to Israel and think that this ever was about a good cause. On the other hand of course there are also those that jump on any claim that makes Israel look bad. Claims of which there are many. Of whi…

The generally accepted terminology here is "pro-Zionist" and "anti-Zionist". There is a concerted effort to conflate "anti-Zionism" and "antisemitism" in public discourse. You're not imaginging things. It's part of an organized campaign generally called hasbara [1]. Articles or videos that don't suit this narrative are brigaded, flagged and reported (as you noted).

I say all this because to call it "Israeli" is inaccurate. For example, in the US Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish Zionists by at least 20:1. Many of those Christian Zionists themselves are antisemitic. This is another reason why our language here matters and we need to be precise with our termminology.

[1]: https://www.newarab.com/news/understanding-hasbara-israels-p...

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

#676

Post by worddepress »

leke wrote: post #410

Kind of speculation at this point, but I wonder if Lavendar was involved in the recent killing of the World Central Kitchen Aid workers.

Morally it doesn't up the ante of course, they are already well into a genocide. But optically killing westerners, especially when they are clearly doing aid and you can't throw "they terrorist" shade on it. The World Central Kitchen incident has increased the strength of the platitudes coming from other countries. But not seeing any arms or trade sanctions yet, and no "pausing of funds while we investigate" type stuff reserved for anyone supporting Gaza people.

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

#677

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

tmnvix wrote: post #658
steviedotboston wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the total failure to achieve any of its stated objectives, has this use of AI benefited the IDF at all? Hamas has been considerably diminished. It's not accurate to say the war has been a "total failure".

Politically and diplomatically, it could be argued Hamas have been considerably strengthened. They certainly think so. It seems to me that Israel's overall position - politically, diplomatically, and in terms of physical security - has become much worse since the October 7 attack and it has been their own actions that are responsible for the change. A different response should have seen them politically and diplomati…

I'm not sure Hamas has anything left to win. Gaza is in ruins. If things go on the way they are for very much longer, there won't even be left any Palestinians in Gaza, only Hamas in its tunnels. The lords of the underground... buried under the rubble. That's not a vision of victory.

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

#678

Post by nsguy »

digging wrote: post #451
sequoia wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What is the "zero-error" alternative approach for dropping bombs in a war, or firing rockets for that matter? Honestly, I'm not sure. Obviously humans make errors of all sorts as well, and even make intentionally unethical decisions. I think the horror of this situation is that it makes war easier to wage. Accepting that all war has costs measured in blood, we should want less war. However, those in control of mili…

Since you went off topic. If Palestinians only wanted dignity and self-determination this conflict would have been resolved a long time ago. Palestinians, broadly speaking, want Israel removed from the map. This is why they're chanting "from the river to the sea" which happens to include the area Israel is situated in.

During the Oslo peace process, when Israel was trying to address this in the way you propose, Hamas launched a suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

You can be critical of everything Israel does, in this war or ever - fine. But the Palestinians have no other accepted settlement other than shipping ~8 million Jews to Europe or killing them.

The people who suddenly developed this simplistic understanding of occupation/resistance/occupier have no idea what they're talking about. Often quite literally in the sense they don't even understand the meaning of what they're saying, not to mention the history of Israel or the middle east. EDIT: I realize this last statement can feel offensive but this is still my take based on two decades of interactions with a fairly random sample of people trying to explain wth is going on in this tiny piece of the middle east. The complexity of the situation doesn't yield itself to simplistic narratives (from neither side really, though my statement refers to one of those narratives the Israeli side simplistic narrative is also insufficient/inaccurate).

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

#679

Post by bitcharmer »

NickC25 wrote: post #185

This shouldn't be flagged.

Given how gang-flagging as a form of censorship became prevalent here on HN I think they should consider removing flagging functionality for submissions entirely. It should of course stay for comments but posts typically get flagged for political reasons and nothing else.

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

#680

Post by solarpunk »

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.

What if the AI was trained on data collected and assembled by someone with "tribal bloodlust".
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