AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip
Wikipedia
As part of the Gaza war, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have used artificial intelligence to rapidly and automatically perform much of the process of determining what to bomb. Israel has greatly expanded the bombing of the Gaza Strip, which in previous wars had been limited by the Israeli Air Force running out of targets.
These tools include the Gospel, an AI which automatically reviews surveillance data looking for buildings, equipment and people thought to belong to the enemy, and upon finding them, recommends bombing targets to a human analyst who may then decide whether to pass it along to the field. Another is Lavender, an “AI-powered database” which lists tens of thousands of Palestinian men linked by AI to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and which is also used for target recommendation.
‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza
The Guardian · Archived
Precisely what forms of data are ingested into the Gospel is not known. But experts said AI-based decision support systems for targeting would typically analyse large sets of information from a range of sources, such as drone footage, intercepted communications, surveillance data and information drawn from monitoring the movements and behaviour patterns of individuals and large groups.
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“We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target. The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate.”
Israel is using an AI system to find targets in Gaza. Experts say it’s just the start
NPR · Archived
Although it’s not known exactly what data the Gospel uses to make its suggestions, it likely comes from a wide variety of different sources. The list includes things like cell phone messages, satellite imagery, drone footage and even seismic sensors, according to Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a group that facilitates military cooperation between Israel and the United States.
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“AI algorithms are notoriously flawed with high error rates observed across applications that require precision, accuracy, and safety,” warns Heidy Khlaaf, Engineering Director of AI Assurance at Trail of Bits, a technology security firm.
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“The nature of AI systems is to provide outcomes based on statistical and probabilistic inferences and correlations from historical data, and not any type of reasoning, factual evidence, or ‘causation,’” she says. “Given the track record of high error-rates of AI systems, imprecisely and biasedly automating targets is really not far from indiscriminate targeting.”
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While Israel’s use of the Gospel to generate a full set of targets may be unique, the nation is hardly alone in using AI to assist in intelligence analysis. The U.S. is actively working with many different kinds of AI to try and identify targets in the field. One suite of AI tools, known as Project Maven, is run through the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which collects massive quantities of satellite imagery.
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Ashley wouldn’t comment on any particular AI tool used by the U.S. intelligence community, but he says often these systems will stitch together multiple layers of AI. Some excel at finding objects in images while others can sort through things like radio transmissions . . . “You know the Russians are doing it, you know the Chinese are doing it,” he says.
Anthropic Dials Back AI Safety Commitments
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