We Are Now in Terminator Territory

We must collectively pause and reflect. Exploring Israel, AI, and our growing efficiency to kill other humans.

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At one time I was thinking AI got dangerous, we could just unplug the computer.  Now I’m not so sure….

What if it started actually killing people on a large scale?  It’s worth asking…

What is a war crime? Using nuclear weapons at this point would probably qualify. But what about technology that is so new that few humans can even fathom it?  Apparently, it is no longer scifi.

I recently heard somewhere that Israel is using artificial intelligence to track targets in Gaza. Here is an article about "Lavender" – detailing exactly how such a system has taken killing decisions out of the hands of humans.

I am hesitant to write about “news” these days because there is so much doubt about credibility, whatever one uses as a source.  In this case the source is +972 Magazine, to which I was led by the Washington Post.

The Details Provided Are Very Sobering

Regardless, the details in this story make it hard to doubt and the results clearly visible on TV every night speak for themselves.

I wasn’t quite able to finish the whole article.  My lunch is churning in my stomach.  Here is a sample:

“Lavender learns to identify characteristics of known Hamas and PIJ operatives, whose information was fed to the machine as training data, and then to locate these same characteristics — also called “features” — among the general population, the sources explained. An individual found to have several different incriminating features will reach a high rating, and thus automatically becomes a potential target for assassination.”  (From the article)

According to the author who references IDF sources, the system was programmed to identify Hamas targets, and after October 7 expanded to included even “junior operatives”.

They Were Targeted At Home

This led to the identification of thousands of Hamas targets, but they weren’t to be attacked on the battle field; rather it was more expedient to get them where they lived, and the IDF used a tracker knicknamed “Where’s Daddy” to track individuals to their homes where they were bombed or taken out by drone in the early morning hours.

Here is a description of how the operation was expanded to widen the net of targets:

“’We didn’t know who the junior operatives were, because Israel didn’t track them routinely [before the war],’ explained senior officer B. to +972 and Local Call, illuminating the reason behind the development of this particular target machine for the current war. ‘They wanted to allow us to attack [the junior operatives] automatically. That’s the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy.’”

So rather than increasing the efficiency of treating breast cancer, or processing financial transactions, the IDF was excited about the prospect to automating killing to an extent never before contemplated.

Throughout human history, any side in a war has seen fit to use any technological advantage.  We used the atomic bomb to purportedly shorten World War II, and faced with unimagined horrors Japan capitulated.

After October 7^th no one could blame the Israelis for declaring “war” on Hamas.

But it would seem to me beyond controversy that using computer software to identify targets on a large scale would qualify as a war crime.  No matter what scientists might tell us about using “neural networks” or otherwise “humanizing” artificial intelligence – this is potentially suicidal for humanity.

This Goes Deep for Me

I was raised sort of Jewish – bar mitzvahed and sort of know most of the holidays – but deep in my conditioning there is the sense of an ancestral tie to Israel.

I have mentioned that my parents were both holocaust survivors, and described how after a tour of Israel my father came back very disillusioned in 1979.

I have no doubt that by now China, Russia and most assuredly our own Pentagon has begun using this software and feel the need to keep up with its development for security reasons.

But for me, having the descendants of the survivors of the German Holocaust perfect and using such weapons on a mass scale is almost incomprehensible, except that the last few years have taught us that we need to comprehend everything as best we can.

I still feel a connection to the people of Israel – but this is a criminal regime.  Unfortunately, it is precisely an example of what could happen – and is happening – when really corrupt humans get this technology.  I am disgusted that Netanyahu has been invited to address Congress and hope the invitation is rescinded.

What is particularly sobering, besides the obvious fact that the genie is out of the bottle with AI as it was with nuclear weapons, is that there have been those warning about the dangers of AI (in terms of human extinction as a real possibility) from within the AI community itself for some time.

Those warnings have gotten louder recently as technology continued to improve.

But if our species has gotten the point of actually using this kind of “intelligence” to more efficiently kill people, then everyone should probably begin to pay attention and ask some deep questions.

We’ve been using satellite technology, GPS and of course drones in war zones for some time, but it seems that the ultimate decisions were made by humans.  Before the AI began identifying targets the Israelis also required human sign off on missions to take out specific individuals and tried to avoid civilian casualties.

If we are now using completely impersonal technology to make decisions of life or death then the prospect for unimaginable mayhem is grim indeed.  What we have is a mass murder strategy combined with a nonhuman technology to manage and implement it.

At Auschwitz they had primitive IBM calculating machines called the Hollerith.  This is exponentially more deadly.

As I write this, two months after this article ran, Israel has just attacked a camp in Rafah that was supposedly an evacuation location, killing at least 45 and causing incredible devastation.

Israel’s president, who some accuse of war crimes, has called it a ‘terrible mistake” that happens in war.

But allowing an unsupervised machine to somehow select and target victims is not a “mistake.” It is escalating the killing exponentially – in this case obviously into civilian areas – with zero accountability.

When the bank processes your check incorrectly using its software they may say,, “sorry for the inconvenience.”

When that reality is existential and some zeroes and ones decide who should die, we are firmly in Terminator territory.