10 ms·

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 d

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 supervision in place would not discover these faults. I took this to mean that a human did press the "approve" button on the computer's recommendation. Though they make clear they were basically "rubber stamping" the machine recommendation. But to my point: > “There was no ‘zero-error’ policy. Mistakes were treated statistically,” said a source who used Lavender. What is the "zero-error" alternative approach for dropping bombs in a war, or firing rockets for that matter? I don't understand the implicit comparison between this approach to targeting and a hypothetical approach that allows war to be waged without any innocents dying or buildings being destroyed. This system should be compared to whatever the real alternative is when it comes to target selection. Again I know nothing about military strategy, I'm hoping someone with more experience will speak up. To use an analogy: if we are talking about self-driving cars, the rates of collision or death should be compared the rates of collision or death in cars driven by humans. Comparing against some imaginary scenario where cars have no collisions and cause no deaths doesn't make sense.

stonogo 3y ago
The difference is between inaccuracy of a weapon hitting a target and inaccuracy of target selection in the first place. Remember the scene in Men In Black where the recruita do target practice? They were all accurate at hitting what they shot at but only Will Smith's character was accurate at selecting a target. This AI chooses targets; it does not fire weapons.
- astockwell 3y ago
  Haha having recently rewatched MIB with my daughter after ~15 years, I don't think Will Smith correctly selected the target... :'D
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    I think you very much missed the context of that scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORHAP6duw9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORHAP6duw9E The job is not "shoot aliens". It's manage aliens, including Earth's population of legal resident aliens (like the taxi driver who he delivers a baby for). The Big Bad of the film is indeed posing as a human, and Smith's character runs into an endless procession of innocent (or at least non-capital-crime) aliens he should not shoot along the way. There's a reason he gets hired over all the military folks in the scene immediately blasting away at the aliens in the shooting range.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
      >> There's a reason he gets hired over all the military folks in the scene immediately blasting away at the aliens in the shooting range. Yes, because he's Will Smith.
      - mandmandam 3y ago
        No. There's an important point being made here. Not to be the tone police or anything, but a HN discussion of AI-powered mass murder really isn't the time to be glib.
        YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
        It's a (sub) thread about MIB and there's plenty of levity throughout it. I think I'm fine. No problem with tone policing for me. I think that's how this board works, although more implicitly.
    - mda 3y ago
      Observes and kills a child carrying the science book.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        The entire segment this is part of makes it very clear they're looking for out-of-the-box thinking and a unique approach to problem solving in situations that might not be what they seem at first glance. It starts with uncomfortable chairs and a written test on flimsy paper without desks; Smith's character noisily pulls over a table to write on while the military folks do the expected thing of struggling through. "You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training", they get told, and then their memories are wiped. Smith's character, instead, gets a briefing on the MIB and an intro to alien bugs pouring Kay some coffee. (Said briefing also indicates Earth is a neutral zone for alien refugees. Again, "shoot first" is not what they want people doing!)
- wavefunction 3y ago
  "Just following orders" huh? I can't believe I'm being offered Will Smith analogies as apologia for an actual genocide. This is one of the most of awful (in all senses quality, content, intention, execution) posts I've ever read in my entire life.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    I’m fairly certain you’ve completely misread the post. It’s a criticism of letting the AI pick targets.
ok_dad 3y ago
Later in the article they talk about how they specifically approved up to 15-20 civilians to die with those marked individuals and would bomb their homes as a first option. I’m disgusted by this, I don’t care anymore what happened in October, this needs to stop. Israel government cannot be trusted to run this war, it’s turned into genocide and we’re all complicit letting them do it and supporting them. I can’t believe people actually support this, it’s clear they’ve forgotten Palestinians are people.
- gambiting 3y ago
  Israeli officials are constantly being asked "how many dead palestinians is too many" in this conflict, and the answer has explicitly been "there is no such thing" way too many times. There is no upper limit on how many people can be killed to further their goals. The most upsetting(for me) thing is reports of all the kids killed by snipers and just in general, as a father I cannot imagine losing my child to this. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestini... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/23/israel-killing-children-west-bank https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/23/israel...
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - Angostura 3y ago
    Has any combatant in any armed struggle ever given a clear answer to that question?
    - roywiggins 3y ago
      If you multiply out the number of targets that Lavender generated by the number of acceptable civilian deaths per target, you get a number that is ~40% of all Gazans.
      - 3y ago
romwell 3y ago
[flagged]
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>It's rather unfashionable these days to bring up the fact that Hamas purposely disguises themselves as civilians and operates almost exclusively from civlian buildings, and makes sure their compounds aren't separated from civilian infrastructure. And yet, somehow I still feel like the answer to this problem still isn't "authorizing up to 15-20 civilian deaths for every enemy militant killed" as mentioned in the article.
  - stoorafa 3y ago
    It’s also “unfashionable” because the criteria for who qualifies as Hamas varies depending on how you ask. See jhallenworld’s comment elsewhere in this post: > “Hamas terrorist” criteria: a male or fighting age… Of course there will be males of fighting age among civilians, many of them _are_ civilians
    - romwell 3y ago
      >See jhallenworld’s comment elsewhere in this post: > “Hamas terrorist” criteria: a male or fighting age… Notably, this is not a criterion used by IDF, even though Hamas does everything to make it so. Consider the usual criteria used to distinguish members of military organizations: [ ] uniforms [ ] operating from military bases separate from civilian buildings [ ] name tags / military IDs [ ] vehicles clearly identifiable as military (by markings, plates, etc) All of those are required by international law. I checked off all of the ones that Hamas uses.
      - squigz 3y ago
        Can you link to the criteria the IDF uses, and/or the international law(s) that requires those criteria be used?
      - calgoo 3y ago
digging 3y ago
> 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 military forces always have incentive to wage war, so removing friction from the process is dangerous. Off-topic of AI, but on-topic of your question: The actual alternative to unleashing AI assassination is not human-selected targets, but not waging war. It isn't necessary to destroy Hamas with violence, it would have worked better to give Palestinians dignity and self-determination long ago. That can still work, although until it does Hamas will continue to be a problem. But as I said, war is useful for the political leaders of Israel, so they stoked and fed the flames for decades to maintain an excuse for the war machine.
- llamaimperative 3y ago
  Eh, some people actually have different visions for the world. They'll elect people who are abhorrent to western liberal values over and over again. I don't know what a new election in Gaza would yield, but I don't think it can be a given that giving X group dignity and self-determination will necessarily tilt them toward western liberal outcomes.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
    I don’t think israeli policy is or has been particularly effective in expanding western liberal values to palestinians. I’d argue putting people under such pressure provides the exact opposite incentives.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      I didn’t claim otherwise.
  - digging 3y ago
    > tilt them toward western liberal outcomes Fortunately, this is not what I'm hoping for! I'd much rather see another Rojava than another Western plutocracy.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
runarberg 3y ago
We also have to be open to the possibility that Israel is committing a genocide and the goal is to kill as many Palestinians as possible and terrorize the rest. That the AI system’s main purpose isn’t to be accurate in selecting target, but rather to manufacture a reason to kill more Palestinians than a human ever could. Another function could be to remove accountability from a targeting officer. Zero-error is never really a desired feature, in fact zero-error would be a bug, as it would prevent the genocide being conducted efficiently. What we may be witnessing is the first information age level genocide, where the killing is done at the behest of a statistical function with near infinite computing power.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  This is an obviously wrong analysis. Killing the most people possible would require no AI in this situation.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    Killing the most people possible without being held accountable and still receiving support from the USA then.
- goatlover 3y ago
  And incredibly inefficient genocide. Why is it that modern discourse has become so polarized that criticism has to make the worst possible accusations?
  - runarberg 3y ago
    These are the same accusations made among world leaders, human rights organizations, the UN, and the World Court. We should be free to make these accusations here on HN too. This is a strong accusation, but it has the evidence behind it. The most recent of which is a report published at the UN Human Rights Council[1], but also the case filed at the World Court by South Africa in December with addenda added in March[2]. The evidence for this claim is both public, overwhelming, and has been filed at the world’s highest court. All that said, I actually didn’t make the claim here—though I have elsewhere—I merely said we should be open to the possibility that this is the case. 1: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session55/advance-versions/a-hrc-55-73-auv.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genoci...
YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
>> Comparing against some imaginary scenario where cars have no collisions and cause no deaths doesn't make sense. That's not the whole story. For example, we ban certain kinds of weapons -cluster munitions, chemical weapons, biological weapons, ideally we'd ban bloody mines- not because they kill too many people compared to "conventional" weapons (they don't) but because they are considered especially ... well, wrong, in the moral sense. So maybe we decide that being killed by a machine, that decides you're a target and pulls the trigger autonomously is especially morally wrong and we don't accept it.
- adastra22 3y ago
  For clarity, cluster munitions and mines are banned because they kill indiscriminately and pose cleanup hazards. Chemical and biological weapons are banned because, like nukes, escalation of their use results in a scorched earth scenario.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Also, in case of top tier of biological weapon, even a single strike - or a single accident - has potentially unlimited area of effect, up to and including the entire planet. Remember COVID-19? Whether you believe in it being natural or a lab leak, it is a good model of how a handling mishap with a mediocre bioweapon would look like.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      Better bioweapons would potentially be more targeted, and/or have reproductive clocks that disable them after a certain number of generations. But you absolutely run the risk of them evolving away from such restrictions.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        My understanding is that such a bioweapon cannot be created with current technology. We know such things are possible, but we can't actually do them.
lozenge 3y ago
I think 90 percent accuracy in this case means 10 percent of "suggested terrorists" were overturned with detailed human review. There's no way the Israelis were actually able to reliably question the Gazans about whether they really were terrorists. So the issue isn't that there's errors, it's that the army knows there are errors and expect humans to pick them out in 20 seconds- which they know realistically won't happen. The human only has two realistic choices- approve every target, or disapprove every target (which gets you reassigned to another role). It's the classic statistics case of two medical diagnostics for an underlying value that isn't directly observable.
weebull 3y ago
> > “There was no ‘zero-error’ policy. Mistakes were treated statistically,” said a source who used Lavender. > > What is the "zero-error" alternative approach for dropping bombs in a war, or firing rockets for that matter? I don't understand the implicit comparison between this approach to targeting and a hypothetical approach that allows war to be waged without any innocents dying or buildings being destroyed. This system should be compared to whatever the real alternative is when it comes to target selection. I think you've misunderstood the "zero-error" statement. It's not saying "there must be zero errors", rather that "errors don't exist - only some level of collateral damage". Hence the follow up about things being viewed statistically. They view it in the same way that you suggest they should - that there will always be deaths and the questions is whether the system leads to more or less of them. Personally I view that as a very utilitarian argument when applied to a machine of war. It embeds the concept that some loss of innocent life is acceptable.

stonogo 3y ago

The difference is between inaccuracy of a weapon hitting a target and inaccuracy of target selection in the first place. Remember the scene in Men In Black where the recruita do target practice? They were all accurate at hitting what they shot at but only Will Smith's character was accurate at selecting a target. This AI chooses targets; it does not fire weapons.

astockwell 3y ago
Haha having recently rewatched MIB with my daughter after ~15 years, I don't think Will Smith correctly selected the target... :'D
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  I think you very much missed the context of that scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORHAP6duw9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORHAP6duw9E The job is not "shoot aliens". It's manage aliens, including Earth's population of legal resident aliens (like the taxi driver who he delivers a baby for). The Big Bad of the film is indeed posing as a human, and Smith's character runs into an endless procession of innocent (or at least non-capital-crime) aliens he should not shoot along the way. There's a reason he gets hired over all the military folks in the scene immediately blasting away at the aliens in the shooting range.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
    >> There's a reason he gets hired over all the military folks in the scene immediately blasting away at the aliens in the shooting range. Yes, because he's Will Smith.
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      No. There's an important point being made here. Not to be the tone police or anything, but a HN discussion of AI-powered mass murder really isn't the time to be glib.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
        It's a (sub) thread about MIB and there's plenty of levity throughout it. I think I'm fine. No problem with tone policing for me. I think that's how this board works, although more implicitly.
  - mda 3y ago
    Observes and kills a child carrying the science book.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      The entire segment this is part of makes it very clear they're looking for out-of-the-box thinking and a unique approach to problem solving in situations that might not be what they seem at first glance. It starts with uncomfortable chairs and a written test on flimsy paper without desks; Smith's character noisily pulls over a table to write on while the military folks do the expected thing of struggling through. "You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training", they get told, and then their memories are wiped. Smith's character, instead, gets a briefing on the MIB and an intro to alien bugs pouring Kay some coffee. (Said briefing also indicates Earth is a neutral zone for alien refugees. Again, "shoot first" is not what they want people doing!)
wavefunction 3y ago
"Just following orders" huh? I can't believe I'm being offered Will Smith analogies as apologia for an actual genocide. This is one of the most of awful (in all senses quality, content, intention, execution) posts I've ever read in my entire life.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  I’m fairly certain you’ve completely misread the post. It’s a criticism of letting the AI pick targets.

ok_dad 3y ago

Later in the article they talk about how they specifically approved up to 15-20 civilians to die with those marked individuals and would bomb their homes as a first option. I’m disgusted by this, I don’t care anymore what happened in October, this needs to stop. Israel government cannot be trusted to run this war, it’s turned into genocide and we’re all complicit letting them do it and supporting them. I can’t believe people actually support this, it’s clear they’ve forgotten Palestinians are people.

gambiting 3y ago
Israeli officials are constantly being asked "how many dead palestinians is too many" in this conflict, and the answer has explicitly been "there is no such thing" way too many times. There is no upper limit on how many people can be killed to further their goals. The most upsetting(for me) thing is reports of all the kids killed by snipers and just in general, as a father I cannot imagine losing my child to this. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestini... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/23/israel-killing-children-west-bank https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/23/israel...
- lupusreal 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Angostura 3y ago
  Has any combatant in any armed struggle ever given a clear answer to that question?
  - roywiggins 3y ago
    If you multiply out the number of targets that Lavender generated by the number of acceptable civilian deaths per target, you get a number that is ~40% of all Gazans.
    - 3y ago

romwell 3y ago

[flagged]

gambiting 3y ago
>>It's rather unfashionable these days to bring up the fact that Hamas purposely disguises themselves as civilians and operates almost exclusively from civlian buildings, and makes sure their compounds aren't separated from civilian infrastructure. And yet, somehow I still feel like the answer to this problem still isn't "authorizing up to 15-20 civilian deaths for every enemy militant killed" as mentioned in the article.
- stoorafa 3y ago
  It’s also “unfashionable” because the criteria for who qualifies as Hamas varies depending on how you ask. See jhallenworld’s comment elsewhere in this post: > “Hamas terrorist” criteria: a male or fighting age… Of course there will be males of fighting age among civilians, many of them _are_ civilians
  - romwell 3y ago
    >See jhallenworld’s comment elsewhere in this post: > “Hamas terrorist” criteria: a male or fighting age… Notably, this is not a criterion used by IDF, even though Hamas does everything to make it so. Consider the usual criteria used to distinguish members of military organizations: [ ] uniforms [ ] operating from military bases separate from civilian buildings [ ] name tags / military IDs [ ] vehicles clearly identifiable as military (by markings, plates, etc) All of those are required by international law. I checked off all of the ones that Hamas uses.
    - squigz 3y ago
      Can you link to the criteria the IDF uses, and/or the international law(s) that requires those criteria be used?
    - calgoo 3y ago

digging 3y ago

> 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 military forces always have incentive to wage war, so removing friction from the process is dangerous. Off-topic of AI, but on-topic of your question: The actual alternative to unleashing AI assassination is not human-selected targets, but not waging war. It isn't necessary to destroy Hamas with violence, it would have worked better to give Palestinians dignity and self-determination long ago. That can still work, although until it does Hamas will continue to be a problem. But as I said, war is useful for the political leaders of Israel, so they stoked and fed the flames for decades to maintain an excuse for the war machine.

llamaimperative 3y ago
Eh, some people actually have different visions for the world. They'll elect people who are abhorrent to western liberal values over and over again. I don't know what a new election in Gaza would yield, but I don't think it can be a given that giving X group dignity and self-determination will necessarily tilt them toward western liberal outcomes.
- BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
  I don’t think israeli policy is or has been particularly effective in expanding western liberal values to palestinians. I’d argue putting people under such pressure provides the exact opposite incentives.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    I didn’t claim otherwise.
- digging 3y ago
  > tilt them toward western liberal outcomes Fortunately, this is not what I'm hoping for! I'd much rather see another Rojava than another Western plutocracy.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

runarberg 3y ago

We also have to be open to the possibility that Israel is committing a genocide and the goal is to kill as many Palestinians as possible and terrorize the rest. That the AI system’s main purpose isn’t to be accurate in selecting target, but rather to manufacture a reason to kill more Palestinians than a human ever could. Another function could be to remove accountability from a targeting officer. Zero-error is never really a desired feature, in fact zero-error would be a bug, as it would prevent the genocide being conducted efficiently. What we may be witnessing is the first information age level genocide, where the killing is done at the behest of a statistical function with near infinite computing power.

xyzelement 3y ago
This is an obviously wrong analysis. Killing the most people possible would require no AI in this situation.
- runarberg 3y ago
  Killing the most people possible without being held accountable and still receiving support from the USA then.
goatlover 3y ago
And incredibly inefficient genocide. Why is it that modern discourse has become so polarized that criticism has to make the worst possible accusations?
- runarberg 3y ago
  These are the same accusations made among world leaders, human rights organizations, the UN, and the World Court. We should be free to make these accusations here on HN too. This is a strong accusation, but it has the evidence behind it. The most recent of which is a report published at the UN Human Rights Council[1], but also the case filed at the World Court by South Africa in December with addenda added in March[2]. The evidence for this claim is both public, overwhelming, and has been filed at the world’s highest court. All that said, I actually didn’t make the claim here—though I have elsewhere—I merely said we should be open to the possibility that this is the case. 1: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session55/advance-versions/a-hrc-55-73-auv.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genoci...

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago

>> Comparing against some imaginary scenario where cars have no collisions and cause no deaths doesn't make sense. That's not the whole story. For example, we ban certain kinds of weapons -cluster munitions, chemical weapons, biological weapons, ideally we'd ban bloody mines- not because they kill too many people compared to "conventional" weapons (they don't) but because they are considered especially ... well, wrong, in the moral sense. So maybe we decide that being killed by a machine, that decides you're a target and pulls the trigger autonomously is especially morally wrong and we don't accept it.

adastra22 3y ago
For clarity, cluster munitions and mines are banned because they kill indiscriminately and pose cleanup hazards. Chemical and biological weapons are banned because, like nukes, escalation of their use results in a scorched earth scenario.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Also, in case of top tier of biological weapon, even a single strike - or a single accident - has potentially unlimited area of effect, up to and including the entire planet. Remember COVID-19? Whether you believe in it being natural or a lab leak, it is a good model of how a handling mishap with a mediocre bioweapon would look like.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    Better bioweapons would potentially be more targeted, and/or have reproductive clocks that disable them after a certain number of generations. But you absolutely run the risk of them evolving away from such restrictions.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      My understanding is that such a bioweapon cannot be created with current technology. We know such things are possible, but we can't actually do them.

lozenge 3y ago

I think 90 percent accuracy in this case means 10 percent of "suggested terrorists" were overturned with detailed human review. There's no way the Israelis were actually able to reliably question the Gazans about whether they really were terrorists. So the issue isn't that there's errors, it's that the army knows there are errors and expect humans to pick them out in 20 seconds- which they know realistically won't happen. The human only has two realistic choices- approve every target, or disapprove every target (which gets you reassigned to another role). It's the classic statistics case of two medical diagnostics for an underlying value that isn't directly observable.

weebull 3y ago

> > “There was no ‘zero-error’ policy. Mistakes were treated statistically,” said a source who used Lavender. > > What is the "zero-error" alternative approach for dropping bombs in a war, or firing rockets for that matter? I don't understand the implicit comparison between this approach to targeting and a hypothetical approach that allows war to be waged without any innocents dying or buildings being destroyed. This system should be compared to whatever the real alternative is when it comes to target selection. I think you've misunderstood the "zero-error" statement. It's not saying "there must be zero errors", rather that "errors don't exist - only some level of collateral damage". Hence the follow up about things being viewed statistically. They view it in the same way that you suggest they should - that there will always be deaths and the questions is whether the system leads to more or less of them. Personally I view that as a very utilitarian argument when applied to a machine of war. It embeds the concept that some loss of innocent life is acceptable.