UPDATE: Wednesday, Apr 3, 2024 · 8:19:57 PM +00:00 · LaFeminista
This from a year ago
The IDF Introduces Artificial Intelligence to the Battlefield – A New Frontier? Link to Articles of War
New and emerging technologies impact significantly the ways in which military operations are conducted. Advancements have been achieved in the development and deployment of autonomous weapon systems, military use of cyberspace, and more. One emerging field in which significant leaps are currently being made is Artificial Intelligence (AI) with military application.
In recent weeks, several high-ranking Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officers informed the press that Israel is deploying AI tools as part of its military arsenal. According to a thorough interview in Hebrew, the IDF uses AI to assist its offensive decision-making, for example to determine if a target is a military or a civilian one. In addition, some defensive tools are used to alert forces that they are under threat of a rocket or missile attack, or to aid in better safeguarding border movement, especially after the new IDF AI strategy was launched in 2022.
It is possible that the AI explosion in the public sphere, with the introduction of Chat GPT3 and Microsoft’s announcement that it will add an AI toolbar to Bing, influenced the IDF in declaring openly its novel use of AI. The decision to come into the open in this regard asserts technical supremacy and has value in terms of deterrence. Yet is this the right time or manner in which to do so?
The reports from the IDF raise several questions. In this post, we focus on the review of new weapons and means and methods of warfare. As we will show, it seems that the IDF’s declarations are premature, and more prudence is required when deploying tools that lead armies into uncharted territories.
*it seems that the IDF’s declarations are premature, and more prudence is required
Well a whole year ago, prudence seems to have left the building.
‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets Link to the Guardian
The Israeli military’s bombing campaign in Gaza used a previously undisclosed AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war.
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.
“This is unparalleled, in my memory,” said one intelligence officer who used Lavender, adding that they had more faith in a “statistical mechanism” than a grieving soldier. “Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.”
Another Lavender user questioned whether humans’ role in the selection process was meaningful. “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time.”
So you didn’t know how 33,000 died [+12,000 missing presumed dead]
Well, now you do.
20 seconds to decide.
Humans of no added value.
Saved time.
You might as well just automate it
Color me disgusted, this AI selection process has been discussed frequently never this bluntly. www.972mag.com/…
In 2021, a book titled “The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World” was released in English under the pen name “Brigadier General Y.S.” In it, the author — a man who we confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 — makes the case for designing a special machine that could rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential “targets” for military strikes in the heat of a war. Such technology, he writes, would resolve what he described as a “human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.”
May our favorite deity/philosophy. protect us all.
My next words would get me banned, so I’ll stop here.