[ International ] [ Main Menu ]
53767
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: 'Automated Assassination'
URL: https://original.antiwar.com/Will_Porter/2024/04/07/israel-lets-ai-decide-who-dies-in-gaza/
|
The IDF is increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence to mark Palestinians for death – innocent or not by Will Porter Posted onApril 08, 2024 The Israeli military has employed yet another AI-based system to select bombing targets in the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine has revealed. The new system has generated sweeping kill lists condemning tens of thousands of Palestinians, part of the IDF’s growing dependence on AI to plan lethal strikes. Citing six Israeli intelligence officers, the Tel Aviv- based magazine said the previously undisclosed AI system, dubbed ‘Lavender,’ has played a “central role in the unprecedented bombing” of Gaza since last October, with the military effectively treating its output “as if it were a human decision.” “Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets,” the outlet reported, adding that “during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants – and their homes – for possible air strikes.” However, while thousands have been killed in the resulting air raids, the majority were “women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting,” the officers told the magazine, noting that Israeli field commanders often rely on the AI system without consulting more substantial intelligence. “Human personnel often served only as a ‘rubber stamp’ for the machine’s decisions,” one source said, adding that many commanders spend a mere “20 seconds” reviewing targets before approving strikes – “just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male.” Human input has been relegated to such a minor role in the decision-making process that Lavender’s conclusions are often treated as “an order” by Israeli troops, “with no requirement to independently check why the machine made that choice.” Such decisions are made despite well-known system errors which result in misidentified targets in at least 10% of cases. Nonetheless, the AI has “systematically” selected the homes of suspected militants for strikes, with IDF bombings frequently carried out late at night, when entire families are more likely to be present. In targeting lower-level Hamas fighters in the early stages of the war, the military largely resorted to the use of unguided ‘dumb bombs,’ concluding it was permissible to “kill up to 15 or 20 civilians” in such operations, the intelligence sources added. Senior militants, meanwhile, could warrant the deaths of “more than 100 civilians” in some cases. “You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people,” one officer said. Automated Assassination Lavender is far from the first AI program used to direct operations for Israel’s military. Yet another system unveiled by +972 mag, known as ‘Where’s Daddy?’, has also been used “specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences.” An unnamed intelligence officer told the outlet that homes are considered a “first option” for targeting, observing that the IDF is “not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they [are] in a military building or engaged in a military activity.” As of April, Israeli bombings have damaged or destroyed a staggering 62% of all housing units in Gaza – or nearly 300,000 homes – leaving more than 1 million people internally displaced, according to United Nations estimates. The territory’s housing sector has borne the brunt of the Israeli onslaught, representing well over two-thirds of the destruction in Gaza to date. Earlier reporting has shed further light on Israel’s AI- driven “mass assassination factory,” with another program, ‘the Gospel,’ used to automatically generate massive target lists at a rate vastly exceeding previous methods. Under the guidance of that tool, Israeli forces have increasingly struck what they call “power targets,” including high-rise residential structures and public buildings. Such attacks are reportedly part of an effort to exert “civil pressure” on Palestinian society – a tactic clearly prohibited under international law as a form of collective punishment. The IDF has long relied on extensive “target banks” in planning operations in Gaza and the West Bank, gathering a long list of suspected militant command posts and installations. In recent years, however, those lists have swelled to include thousands of potential targets as the military outsources decision-making to automated systems. Adding to the litany of AI programs used to deliver death in Gaza and beyond, Israel’s ‘Fire Factory’ system helps to automatically calculate munitions payloads and assign targets to particular aircraft or drones once they are selected. “What used to take hours now takes minutes, with a few more minutes for human review,” an IDF colonel said of the system in comments to Bloomberg. Artificial intelligence and AI-powered facial recognition tech have similarly taken a greater role in policing the border between the occupied territories and Israel proper – as well as West Bank checkpoints – with the IDF deploying a litany of new systems to identify, surveil and arrest Palestinians in recent years. |
Responses:
[53774] [53777] [53797] [53770] [53772] [53822] [53773] [53768]
53774
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: my question...
|
How did the US intel & the Biden administration not know about Gospel, Lavender, etc.. and the intentional targeting? It's extremely difficult to believe we didn't know, and that makes US complicity in Israeli war crimes exponentially deeper. imo, of course. |
53777
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 'Automated Assassination' - oops
URL: Link
| I am of the same opinion. |
Responses:
[53797]
53797
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Antiwar.com: Questionable/low Cred/propaganda/poor sourcing
|
Overall, we rate Antiwar.com Right-Center biased and questionable based on several instances of publishing false or misleading claims regarding Ukraine. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to the promotion of conspiracy theories, propaganda, and poor sourcing. Detailed Report Questionable Reasoning: False Information. Propaganda, Conspiracy, Poor Sourcing Bias Rating: RIGHT-CENTER Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY |
Responses:
None
53770
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Antiwar: false/misleading/CTs/propaganda/poor sourcing/questionable
|
Overall, we rate Antiwar.com Right-Center biased and questionable based on several instances of publishing false or misleading claims regarding Ukraine. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to the promotion of conspiracy theories, propaganda, and poor sourcing. Detailed Report Questionable Reasoning: False Information. Propaganda, Conspiracy, Poor Sourcing Bias Rating: RIGHT-CENTER Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: USA MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Website Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY |
53772
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: uh oh...
URL: Jacobin - A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
|
from redhart's mediabiasfactcheck link re. anti-war.com: Failed Fact Checks Although there are no direct failed fact checks we have found some instances of false or misleading information, especially as it relates the Russian-Ukraine conflict: 1. Claim about the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine (2014 – Present): Description: Antiwar.com published articles claiming that the U.S. supported the Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014 as a coup. For example, a January 2023 article titled “MLK: Beyond Vietnam to Ukraine” stated, “Ukraine is a proxy for the US, which promoted the 2014 coup and has been pumping weapons into Ukraine ever since.” Why It’s False: There is no evidence to support the claim that the Maidan revolution was a Western-backed coup. The Maidan revolution began as a series of protests in Kyiv’s Independence Square against then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to suspend an association agreement with the European Union. The protests grew over time, leading to Yanukovych’s ouster, but this was primarily a domestic political movement, not a foreign-engineered coup. Yet this Jacobin article confirms the claim. and mediabiasfactcheck.com rates Jacobin 'High' for factual reporting. Jacobin's highly credibly too, says mediabiasfactcheck: Bias Rating: LEFT Factual Reporting: HIGH Country: USA MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Magazine Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/jacobin/ what to do. from Jacobin's linked article: "Like today’s Russia-NATO tensions more broadly, at the heart of the Maidan protests was the push by some Western governments, especially the United States, to isolate Russia by supporting the integration of peripheral parts of the former Soviet Union into European and Atlantic institutions — and Moscow’s pushback against what it saw as an encroachment on its sphere of influence." |
53822
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: uh oh...
|
that's Jacobin, not antiwar. To each their own. |
Responses:
None
53773
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: more evidence CJR was correct about mediabiastfact.com...
|
The armchair academics Amateur attempts at such tools already exist, and have found plenty of fans. Google “media bias,” and you’ll find Media Bias/Fact Check, run by armchair media analyst Dave Van Zandt. The site’s methodology is simple: Van Zandt and his team rate each outlet from 0 to 10 on the categories of biased wording and headlines, factuality and sourcing, story choices (“does the source report news from both sides”), and political affiliation. A similar effort is “The Media Bias Chart,” or simply, “The Chart.” Created by Colorado patent attorney Vanessa Otero, the chart has gone through several methodological iterations, but currently is based on her evaluation of outlets’ stories on dimensions of veracity, fairness, and expression. Both efforts suffer from the very problem they’re trying to address: Their subjective assessments leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in. Compared to Gentzkow and Shapiro, the five to 20 stories typically judged on these sites represent but a drop of mainstream news outlets’ production. |
Responses:
None
53768
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 'Automated Assassination' - oops
URL: Link
| Apology, Akria. Posted before scrolling down. |
Responses:
None
[ International ] [ Main Menu ]