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Comment by fullstick

2 years ago

The name of Lavender makes this so surreal to me for some reason. I'm of the opinion that algorithms shouldn't determine who lives and dies, but it's so common even outside of war.

The code names for secret operations can be dead on or funny at times. I remember a few being emoji’s. It’s only a matter of time until USA or other allied countries secrets are released for using AI enhanced information.

How do you think they process millions of call records, intercepted messages, sim swaps, etc?

I think the algorithm, in this case, makes a suggestion and then a human evaluates it. The article claims they've only looked at the sex of the target (kill if male) but also claims 90% effectiveness. I'm curious if 90% is a good number or not? War will always have collateral damages but if technology can help limit that beyond what only a human could do then I'd say it's a net positive. I think the massive efficiencies the algorithm brings to picking targets is a bit frightening (nowhere to run or hide now) but there's no real turning back.

People thought this way about the machine gun, the armored tank, the atom bomb. But once the genie is out there's no putting it back in.

As an aside, I think this is a good example of how humans and AI will work together to bring efficiency to whatever tasks need to be accomplished. There's a lot of fear of AI taking jobs, but I think it was Peter Thiel who said years ago that future AI would work side by side humans to accomplish tasks. Here we are.

  • >During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. 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