UN chief ‘troubled’ by reports Israel using AI in Gaza strikes
UNITED NATIONS—UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on Friday expressed serious concern over reports that Israel was using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify targets in Gaza, resulting in many civilian deaths.According to a report in independent Israeli-Palestinian magazine 972, Israel has used AI to identify targets in Gaza—in some cases with as little as 20 seconds of human oversight.
Guterres said that he was “deeply troubled by reports that the Israeli military’s bombing campaign includes Artificial Intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets, particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties.”
“No part of life and death decisions which impact entire families should be delegated to the cold calculation of algorithms,” he said.
The 972 report claims that “the Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties.”
The report said that, according to “six Israeli intelligence officers,” a system dubbed Lavender had “played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war.”
‘Lavender’
“According to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine ‘as if it were a human decision,’” 972 reported.
Two sources said “the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians.”
If “the target was a senior Hamas official … the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians,” it added.
The Israeli army, known as the IDF, on Friday rejected the claims.
Cross-referenced
“The IDF does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist,” it said.
Instead it has a “database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources … on the military operatives of terrorist organizations” to be used as a tool for analysts, it added.
“The IDF does not carry out strikes when the expected collateral damage from the strike is excessive,” it said, using a term that includes civilian casualties.
The deadliest ever Gaza war erupted with Palestinian militant group Hamas carrying out an unprecedented attack against Israel on Oct. 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Palestinian militants took more than 250 hostages on Oct. 7, of whom 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 33,091 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
Israel began hyping AI-powered targeting after an 11-day conflict in Gaza during May 2021, which commanders branded the world’s “first AI war.” —AFP
