Israel Turned To AI To Help Target Islamic Terrorists

This is from an exclusive at the Washington Post, which seems upset that Israel is killing terrorists

Israel built an ‘AI factory’ for war. It unleashed it in Gaza.

After the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces deluged Gaza with bombs, drawing on a database painstakingly compiled through the years that detailed home addresses, tunnels and other infrastructure critical to the militant group.

But then the target bank ran low. To maintain the war’s breakneck pace, the IDF turned to an elaborate artificial intelligence tool called Habsora — or “the Gospel” — which could quickly generate hundreds of additional targets.

The use of AI to rapidly refill IDF’s target bank allowed the military to continue its campaign uninterrupted, according to two people familiar with the operation. It is an example of how the decade-long program to place advanced AI tools at the center of IDF’s intelligence operations has contributed to the violence of Israel’s 14-month war in Gaza.

The IDF has broadcast the existence of these programs, which constitute what some experts consider the most advanced military AI initiative ever to be deployed. But a Washington Post investigation reveals previously unreported details of the inner workings of the machine-learning program, along with the secretive, decade-long history of its development.

Personally, I see no issue with the IDF using all the tools they can to kill members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and any associated with them.

The investigation also reveals a fierce debate within the highest echelons of the military, starting years before Oct. 7, about the quality of intelligence gathered by AI, whether the technologies’ recommendations garnered sufficient scrutiny, and if the focus on AI weakened the IDF’s intelligence capabilities. Some internal critics argue the AI program has been a behind-the-scenes force accelerating the death toll in Gaza, which has now claimed 45,000 lives, more than half of whom were women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

First, no one wants to see their jobs being replaced. Second, they’ve been using the same 45K number for at least 6 months, haven’t they? Seriously, the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry is trotting out the same number month after month, and news outlets like the Washington Post keep running with the Hamas propaganda. And then wonder why they are not trusted.

People familiar with the IDF’s practices, including soldiers who have served in the war, say Israel’s military has significantly expanded the number of acceptable civilian casualties from historic norms. Some argue this shift is enabled by automation, which has made it easier to speedily generate large quantities of targets, including of low-level militants who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks.

Those civilians are hanging with terrorists. Anyhow, once you get by the whining and support for terrorists by the WP, they do get into the meat and tell us some interesting things like

Using the software’s image recognition, soldiers could unearth subtle patterns, including minuscule changes in years of satellite footage of Gaza suggesting that Hamas had buried a rocket launcher or dug a new tunnel on agricultural land, compressing a week’s worth of work into 30 minutes, a former military leader who worked on the systems said.

But

Two former senior commanders said they believe the intense focus on AI was a significant reason Israel was caught off-guard that day. The department overemphasized technological findings and made it difficult for analysts to raise warnings to senior commanders.

It is a long, interesting piece, worth the read.

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