‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
JVL Introduction
This devastating exposure by Yuval Abraham shows the cool, impersonal nature of Israel’s decisions as to who and when to bomb, treating every output of an AI machine, known as Lavender, “as if it were a human decision”.
It singles out “low level” military operatives for killing, with a systematic preference for striking targets while they were in their family homes, along with “an extremely permissive policy” toward casualties, which has led to the killings of entire Palestinian families.
Identification errors are known to run at around 10%.
These revelations by +972 Magazine are still reverberating around the world.
UN Secretary General António Guterres, for example, has said he was “deeply troubled” by its findings, adding “No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms.” The White House is examining its contents
Yuval Abraham is also the author of a ground-breaking report last November, “Explaining why there are so many casualties in Gaza”, reposted here.
RK
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This article was originally published by +972 Magazine, in partnership with Local Call on Tue 2 Apr 2024. Read the original here.
‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties, +972 and Local Call reveal.
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This is bringing to life, to an exponentially horrific and devastating level, the plot to the 2014 Captain America Winter Soldier movie.
I rather good conspiracy style movie with some interesting complexity for a superhero movie.
The Insight Project (developed by the ‘good guys’ to eliminate terrorists – the movie actually critiqued this aspect quite well) involved using targeting satellites , with the use of an algorithm that evaluated an individual’s behavior, which would then eliminate humans who posed a possible threat. HYDRA (an ‘extreme’ Nazi offshoot), in their attempt to enforce a new world order, actually infiltrated the Project Insight to eliminate any who could potentially pose a threat to them.
The future looks grim, if the present is not so already .
Not sure after 75 brutal years thay I would call it a SPREE!!
One of the obvious points is that this ghastly, indiscriminate murder machine is always most likely to be used on the militarily weak who can’t fight back using the same horrible weapons.
The Israelis’ use of this technology must be UNLAWFUL because it’s entirely disproportionate to the military threat the weaker party (Hamas fighters armed mainly with rifles and a few anti-tank shells) poses to the stronger party (the IDF, armed with the most sophisticated weapons warped human ingenuity can provide).
In theory, a PROPERLY TRAINED AND LED army with a vast range of military resources available to it should be able to contain and disarm a much smaller band of lightly armed guerillas by what’s more like an “armed police” operation than anything else.
Instead, the IDF killed mainly babies, children and women as well as a lower percentage of male civilians. Statistical analyses of those who died show the IDF killed very, very few of the Hamas fighters (who were their only legitimate military targets).
I so hope all those directing and taking part in these acts contrary to the rules of war will be prosecuted by ICC and serve long prison sentences if found guilty.
So, now we know that the Israeli decision makers have not only given themselves over to what the late Daniel Kahneman called fast-thinking, they have boosted it with AI. So much for letting cooler heads prevail in conflict resolution, then.