#Gaza / ‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets
The #IDF attacked the #Gaza Strip during the war with the assistance of an #AI-based data system called "Lavender", which incriminated 37,000 men as potential #Hamas and Islamic Jihad (#IJ) activists. According to an investigation published by the local news site "Sikha Mekomit" publised also in The Guardian, in addition to using this system, intelligence sources stated that the army had set quotas for killing uninvolved civilians before certain assassinations.
According to two sources, in the first weeks of the war, the army approved strikes on junior operatives that could kill 15-20 civilians in addition to the targets. They said that attacks on such targets were usually carried out with "stupid bombs" that destroyed entire homes and killed their inhabitants.
[...] “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.”
[...] “Because we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally dropping the whole house on its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don’t care – you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.”
Looks like Israel managed to reimagine #Nazism where the orders come from an AI system, rather than a deranged leader. Mind you, this is an AI system --- a technology so unreliable you wouldn't trust to spell or cite references reliably was used to "identify" targets to kill. Real human beings. Killed with a statistical model. No questions asked.
@oatmeal@bifouba Doing some troll hunting right now, seems like a batch off them created in the last month, Ai profile pics, random mentions of Hamas, and quick with insults if the person they're trolling has an Arabic sounding name.
It was only a couple of months ago that trolls hosted with the poison machine at @babka.social were busy cleaning Mastodon from "antisemites", bullying voices critical of Israel. One of their bearded busy bees went as far as to claim that Local Call [Sikha Mekomit] was a Hamas-operated outlet 🙄 …
However, since then, the exceptional work of the guys at Local Call has been quoted by mainstream media outlets like The Guardian, and now even the New York Times, which with their pathetic record so far (i.e. the Anat Schwartz piece being the most obvious failure) would do well to thoroughly read everything published by Local Call and learn how investigative journalism is done.
So the baseless accusations against Local Call as a “Hamas mouthpiece” have been thoroughly discredited, as their reporting has been widely recognized and relied upon by international media. But this incident highlights the dangers of "poison machines" like @babka.social, @RememberUsAlways
and many others like them (Israel’s official social media setting the tone), who seek to delegitimize and silence critical voices on the Israel-Palestine conflict through smear tactics, and unfounded claims
@oatmeal@israel@palestine I guess being blocked by Serge @babka.social for correcting him on a fine point of modern history is something I should be a bit more proud of!
@rjohnston it’s a badge of honor to wear with pride 🪪 Especially from Sarge who once lectured me about how offnsive it is for him that I use the term #ArabJews, because you know, there’s the word Arab there.
@oatmeal@rjohnston@israel@palestine
You need to check out the account "End Antisemitism" on mastodon social. They are responsible for the majority of ppl getting their accounts limited or suspended. Their real agenda is to silence ppl, and imo, this qualifies as harassment, and there should be a campaign to get them kicked off.
[…] I am deeply troubled by reports that the Israeli military’s bombing campaign includes #AI as a tool in the identification of targets, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties.
[cont'd] #WCK / #UK faces pressure to stop selling weapons to Israel after aid workers killed
[...] The three main British opposition parties and some lawmakers in the governing party on Wednesday said the British government should consider suspending arm sales.
[...] "It's important now that, that advice is published so that we can all be clear that if there has been a breach in international humanitarian law -and I must say that I do have very serious concerns - that arm sales are suspended," said David Lammy, the Labour foreign policy chief, told reporters.
#WCK / Chef Jose Andres says Israel targeted his aid workers 'systematically, car by car'
"This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place, [...[ This was over a 1.5, 1.8 kilometers, with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof, a very colorful logo that we are obviously very proud of," he said. It's “very clear who we are and what we do [...] They were targeting us in a deconflicting zone, in an area controlled by IDF. They knowing that it was our teams moving on that road ... with three cars," he said.
Perhaps the Lavender "AI" had correctly thought that
killing a few aid workers might successfully deter other aid initiatives, and thus help starve palestinians to death -
which is quite an obvious goal of the #Israel#Terror on #Gaza
@sebastian yea. no need for an ai. A twisted, sick leader, like Netanyahu, is more than enough. UNRWA was kneecapped. then an IDF issued report claimed UNRWA is not doing it's job and aid is waiting at the crossing, so it should be dismantled, then kill aid workers... it's obvious the idea is to prevent Gazans coming back to the north and let Israel control it indefinitely.
World Central Kitchen. “World Central Kitchen | WCK Calls for Independent Investigation into IDF Strikes.” Accessed April 4, 2024. https://wck.org/news/idf-investigation.
WCK calls for independent investigation into IDF strikes @israel@palestine
[cont’d] From the Sikha Mekomit [locla call]/972mag report:
[…] “At 5 a.m., [the air force] would come and bomb all the houses that we had marked,” B. said. “We took out thousands of people. We didn’t go through them one by one — we put everything into automated systems, and as soon as one of [the marked individuals] was at home, he immediately became a target. We bombed him and his house.”
[…] “Everything was statistical, everything was neat — it was very dry,” B. said. He noted that this lack of supervision was permitted despite internal checks showing that Lavender’s calculations were considered accurate only 90 percent of the time; in other words, it was known in advance that 10 percent of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all.
[…] B. said that the reason for this automation was a constant push to generate more targets for assassination. “In a day without targets [whose feature rating was sufficient to authorize a strike], we attacked at a lower threshold. We were constantly being pressured: ‘Bring us more targets.’ They really shouted at us. We finished [killing] our targets very quickly.”
[cont’d] IDF official response to an inquiry by Sikha Mekomit (Local Call) regarding an automated targeting system called “The Gospel system”, which seems be the same system calle “Lavender” in the final report.
[…] “It’s been clear that Israel has been using AI to have what they call ‘power targets’ so they are using it intentionally — as opposed to what it’s supposed to be, which is helping with precision — to target civilians,” said Nancy Okail, president of progressive foreign policy think tank the Center for International Policy. She said the IDF appears to be allowing for a broad definition of these “power targets” — which the military’s intelligence branch defines as “ targets with security or perception significance to Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
@oatmeal@israel@palestine "we put everything into automated systems, and as soon as one of [the marked individuals] was at home, he immediately became a target." 👆
This tracks. I recall 2 #AlJazeera journalists who had their houses bombed as soon as they returned home after work.
@oatmeal@israel@palestine civil defense, police, ministry of security treated as 'Hamas enough' for training data. Journalists and aid workers probably have a similar algorithmic profile when it comes to the low thresholds for "computer says die" we're talking about here.
This is every bit as horrific as Pol Pot's killing fields, the gas ovens, the spread of hiv infected blood to the south, the starving of Bengal.
A clearer metaphor for abdication of humanity is impossible.
@oatmeal@israel@palestine Once again, the ey are effectively pleading guilty in The Hague, admitting that they do not in fact know whether they’re hitting an active combatant. They seem believe their own lies about what the rules of law actually say.