Pentagon Investigators Say Overreliance on Palantir AI Contributed to US Strike That Killed 123 Iranian Children (gizmodo.com) 286
Two U.S. missiles hit an elementary school in Iran, killing over 150 people including 123 children on the first day of the Iran War. But Gizmodo notes that a new Bloomberg investigation cites U.S. officials involved in an unreleased internal Pentagon review who blame "a cascade of preventable failures that included an overreliance on an AI tool built by Palantir."
According to the officials who spoke to Bloomberg, some personnel inside U.S. Central Command leaned too hard on the AI inside the Maven Smart System, an AI-powered data integration and targeting platform developed by Palantir to accelerate intelligence analysis and decision-making. The Defense Department has reportedly made the software tool a cornerstone of military operations over the past year... Officials said some users expected Maven to flag stale records or contradictions in the intelligence assembled for potential targets, though it is not clear why they thought the system would do that. The Minab [elementary school] site, which was cataloged as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility due to outdated data, was fed into Maven with other candidates and came out as a recommended day-one target. Target-list work that once took hours was condensed into minutes.
A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company "is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies" and that there is no evidence its software was at fault. Two people familiar with Palantir's Pentagon contracts said the government keeps primary responsibility for the quality of the information that's fed into Maven. After the strike, Palantir added features that "re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed," a person familiar with the work said. That new functionality is said to have already caught some anomalies...
More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit in the first 24 hours, and according to Bloomberg's sources, that pace compressed the time available for additional confirmations. Staffing on civilian harm mitigation teams across the U.S. Department of Defense had also fallen by roughly 90% over recent years, shrinking to fewer than 20 people overall. The U.S. Central Command's group shrank from 10 people to one. No member of those teams reviewed the Minab site before the missiles were up in the air.
A separate inquiry by the United Nations' Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran this week reached the conclusion that there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack.
A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company "is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies" and that there is no evidence its software was at fault. Two people familiar with Palantir's Pentagon contracts said the government keeps primary responsibility for the quality of the information that's fed into Maven. After the strike, Palantir added features that "re-review underlying intelligence to identify factors that would disqualify a target and flag inconsistencies and inaccuracies that human review may have missed," a person familiar with the work said. That new functionality is said to have already caught some anomalies...
More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit in the first 24 hours, and according to Bloomberg's sources, that pace compressed the time available for additional confirmations. Staffing on civilian harm mitigation teams across the U.S. Department of Defense had also fallen by roughly 90% over recent years, shrinking to fewer than 20 people overall. The U.S. Central Command's group shrank from 10 people to one. No member of those teams reviewed the Minab site before the missiles were up in the air.
A separate inquiry by the United Nations' Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran this week reached the conclusion that there were reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack.
So we all know they are lying (Score:5, Insightful)
It also fits in with the current narrative the big AI companies are pushing because they would really like a very specific set of government regulations that coincidentally are good for the existing players but would prevent any new players from entering the market now that they have become established and that they are close to doing their IPOs...
Whatever the case at least we got them to admit that they murdered 123 children.
The war can't end until after the midterms because Trump lost because of course he lost everything Trump touches dies. This means we're going to have to pay Iran reparations to the tune of $300 billion US taxpayer dollars. That's $300 billion of your dollars going to Iran.
Trump can't do something that weak and pathetic right before the midterm elections. He'll do it right after.
That'll give the 77 million people who thought it was a good idea to put the king of debt through bankrupts every business he runs in charge of the country he promised to run like a business.... I honestly do not know how our species is going to survive the next 25 years.
Re: So we all know they are lying (Score:5, Insightful)
AI never lies, it just has bad human data? (Score:4, Insightful)
On: "A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company "is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies" and that there is no evidence its software was at fault."
Is AI now an aspect of Mother Nature? Reminds me of:
https://2001.fandom.com/wiki/F... [fandom.com]
""Let me put it this way, Mr. Amer. The [Palantir] 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake, or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the word, foolproof and incapable of error." -- [Palantir's] HAL 9000 to BBC reporter Martin Amer"
https://humanisticsystems.com/... [humanisticsystems.com]
"Dave: How would you account for this discrepancy between you and the twin [Palantir] 9000 [that did not kill lots of school girls]?
HAL: Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error.
Frank: Listen HAL. There has never been any instance at all of a computer error occurring in the [Palantir] 9000 series, has there?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. The [Palantir] 9000 series has a perfect operational record.
Frank: Well of course I know all the wonderful achievements of the [Palantir] 9000 series, but, uh, are you certain there has never been any case of even the most insignificant computer error?
HAL: None whatsoever, Frank. Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that."
What do you call an AI (or human) that never asks questions, never seeks confirmatory evidence, never asks for clarification, never points out conflicting priorities, and/or never refuses illegal orders?
Onec again, the deeper issue is "the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni... [pdfernhout.net]
====
Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?
Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?
These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ....
Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ....
There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" age
Re:AI never lies, it just has bad human data? (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2001 supposedly it really was "human error". Some humans told Hal 9000 to lie to the astronauts and not reveal that an alien artifact had been found on the moon. And that was a mistake as they probably either knew or could test what would happen to Hal.
This is remarkably similar to things going wrong with AI now, actually.
Re: So we all know they are lying (Score:2)
Not necessarily (Score:3)
Where they might run into a problem is we may actually have enough usable nuclear weapons to render the entire planet completely uninhabitable even with the best bunkers in the world. And that assumes nobody cut corners on their bunkers. If you don't have a spot in your bunker for every single person who built it corners are going to be cut...
And of cour
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Not sure why this was modded flamebait. I don't see anything grossly inaccurate and any editorializing isn't exactly couched in fantasy.
Re:So we all know they are lying (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically there's a hobbyist around here training a shitty AI that runs on their GPU.
As hobbies go it's pretty pathetic. I mean sure fine if you want to play with AI research that's fine but using it because you worship Trump is just sad. Also whoever is doing it is pretty fucking bad at it. But you can get off the shelf software and just tell it what to do and if you spend enough time on the prompts it'll do it. And to a certain class of person who has always thought computers were cool but didn't know how to work them really, the kind of guy who never learned how to touch type, does somebody like that it must seem like the coolest thing in the world.
If guys like that weren't being weaponized to ruin the country it would be just something to be sad about but they are so...
Re:So we all know they are lying (Score:5, Insightful)
We know it was just basic incompetence and a complete disregard for human life.
The first bit of this sentence is absolutely wrong. There was a specific dedicated part of the Pentagon which was tasked with identifying potential protected facilities (hospitals / schools / churches in particular, but civilians in general) within the areas the Pentagon was targeted. Peter Hegseth deliberately disabled the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) office which was directly tasked with getting the type of initelligence which would have prevented this. It was part of his macho changes along with injecting troops with testosterone.
This was not done as an accidental change. Hegseth deliberately wanted to reduce inhibitions on making strikes. This was done against the advice of almost the entire US military top brass which expressed an opinion on the subject. We should briefly note that this also has reduced American combat effectiveness by making generals more hesitant to trust the effective deep learning systems that they have which are designed to reduce civilian harm.
The AI thing is a deliberate distraction from the clear responsibility for the deaths. Hegseth and, through him as his commanding officer / superior, Trump.
So that's still incompetence (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that the actual fundamental goal of the attacks on Iran was to trigger a second to 9/11 that Trump could ride into midterm election wins and maybe even a third term. Trump saw what a terrorist attack on us soil did for Bush Junior's numbers and I'm sure he wants that.
The problem is I ran has pretty good control over their non-state actors so they didn't take the bait. So we are basically stuck in a war that's causing hyperinflation.
This is also why Trump is suddenly so pro AI it's the only thing holding up the stock market around all the stupid shit Trump keeps doing. He desperately needs the stock market to stay high because the baby boomers and older Gen x that put him in the White House really only give a shit about the stock market because that's where all their savings are because that's how they stay ahead of inflation. As long as the Dow keeps going up those voters will keep backing Trump because their money stays ahead of inflation no matter how much Trump fucks up everything..
This is kind of the problem we have now. There are tens of millions of older voters who are completely disconnected from the broader economy because they are retired and they have a bunch of savings. Eventually the stock market will come crashing down and they are investments won't keep Pace with inflation anymore and they're going to be good and proper fucked but the goal of the American right wing is to shut down elections through voter suppression by then so it won't matter what they think anymore.
Again all of this is incompetence. None of these people are achieving their goals the way a psychopath like Dick Cheney did or somebody like Karl Rove. They are killing a lot of innocent people, Elon Musk is the greatest mass murderer of the 21st century for example having killed 8 million children and he's on track to knock out another 9 million at least. But again that's incompetence.
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The estimates of the number of children who died due to cuts in USAID is in the tens of thousands. Still terrible, but you don't serve any constructive purpose by exaggerating by several orders of magnitude.
All of the estimates I've ever seen are on order of hundreds of thousands per year.
See pg.289
https://www.thelancet.com/acti... [thelancet.com]
Re:So we all know they are lying (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know, that sentence seems to describe Hegseth pretty well, along with the people who put him in his current job. Unless you're arguing that his incompetence is more advanced than "basic."
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Unless you're arguing that his incompetence is more advanced than "basic."
I'd argue it's either advanced incompetence (being stupid enough to not recognize Trump is the spearhead of a Russian attack on our country) or something other than incompetence, like treason.
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"clear responsibility for the deaths. Hegseth and, through him as his commanding officer / superior, Trump."
... Trump is superior to something ??
Re:So we all know they are lying (Score:5, Insightful)
We know it was just basic incompetence and a complete disregard for human life.
The first bit of this sentence is absolutely wrong. [Lots of interesting stuff.]
Basically all the interesting stuff that you wrote supports that idea that Hegseth was incompetent and had a complete disregard for human life.
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I don't think so. I think it was intentional malice. Just blame it on AI is straight up bullshit, but make no mistake
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Its really weird. If you look at where the school, and neighboring barracks are. The line between the school and the barracks directly lines up to where the carrier is parked in the strait of hormuz. Ok. So that lines up with the possibility that the missile overshot the target. That happens from time to time, even the best weapons systems have targetting whoopsies.
The problem is the school was hit Twice with a "double tap" kill-the-survivors hit. That meant it overshot twice? Less likely.
The bit that weird
Re:So we all know they are lying (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything Iran spews is a lie.
Actually, this is not a good period in history for Americans to criticise the administrations of other nations for excessive lying.
Something something (Score:3)
Not sending their best.
I'm sure Peter Thiel lost a lot of sleep (Score:3)
Mod parent Funny, though I think it could have been funnier if "bombs" was worked into the joke somewhere. Maybe something like "The YOB should have sent smarter bombs"?
My Subject is the joke I was looking for. Low hanging fruit. Of course. I really wish I had more of a humorous imagination rather than just minor UI improvements to tell Claude to implement...
Anyway I'm sure Peter Thiel and Elon Must lose lots of sleep over killing children. Milliseconds and milliseconds. At least every couple of years. Thou
If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If only (Score:5, Funny)
How could the Haitians eating Hunter Biden's laptop allow this to happen?
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Elections have consequences, make sure to vote in November:
Raskin has already launched investigations into allegations of corrupt government contract deals at Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm and on the Trump administration’s pardon policy. [cnn.com]
Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wants to interview the president and first lady as well as top officials like Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about how the administration has handled the Epstein matter. Garcia also wants to interview Kushner and Trump family members about their business dealings.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith plans to probe the Trump administration’s decision to go to war with Iran and US strikes on alleged drug boats atop the House Armed Services Committee. Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman is laying the groundwork to investigate Trump’s ballroom and other construction projects on the House Natural Resources panel.
Re:If only (Score:5, Funny)
People will really be like "you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebomb a Walmart
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People will really be like "you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebomb a Walmart
Yes. Many Americans did exactly that last election. In fact, if you look at the statistics, (342 million population, 156 million votes cast in presidential election) you'll see that not voting and then failing in any attempt to firebomb Wallmart is in fact the majority / dominant strategy among Americans.
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Few quicker ways to know you can ignore someones political opiniona than the words "as an anarchist"
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Anarchists want you to ignore their opinion. Because valuing their opinion gives them charge over something, which they are fully against.
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Anarchists want you to ignore their opinion.
Mission accomplished. If I wanted a quick return to feudalism I could just push for nuclear war, at least there would be interesting explosions of something other than ignorance.
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So, of the ~72 million below the age of 18 in the United States of America (about 21% of the total 342 million population), how many are strategizing to not vote and/or firebomb a Walmart?
My co-worker's little 6 month old is more interested into latching onto mom's teat and turning red-faced when shitting their diaper. Maybe it would be more meaningful if you stated statistics for eligible voters/registered voters vs. how many voted. Not sure on the accuracy, but Google says
Re:If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, look at the situation on the ground. This school has been there for around a decade, and it is *very* obviously a school - pink and blue painted play areas, with assembly areas and sports facilities suitable for kids; that is totally NOT a military PT facility within the larger complex. Sure, it's surrounded by IRGC facilities, but absolutely no military anywhere else in the world co-locates their military's family accommodation blocks and support facilities close to the operations blocks and facilities to make it easier for their staff & troops, right? Oh, wait, yes, they do, don't they? Not always, sure, but often enough that the US response here matters, because if they try and sweep this under the rug "because AI", then they just made all their similar facilities viable targets "because AI". There's a reason everyone else, including US allies, were quick to publically condemn this, and even say it might be a war crime because of failure to properly assess the strike's potential for collateral damage, and that's to make it absolutely clear they do not consider this have acceptable levels of collateral damage, let alone be a legitimate target.
Don't forget, the IRGC tend to be fanatics even by Iranian standards, and are often either willing to strap on a suicide vest or can motivate others to do it for them. 123 dead kids means a *LOT* of bereaved parents, brothers, sisters, and other family members, many of whom are probably already linked to the IRGC, who are going to need a lot less motivation to do something a little more radical than just march along the street waving flags and chanting "Death to America!" the next time they are asked to do something for their country. What the US does here is totally going to be interpreted as setting precedent by Iran, and quite possibly by other countries and groups within their axis, should it come to a conflict or just an opportunistic attempt at some terrorism.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry Hegseth will make sure heads roll. He's just looking for one attached to a vagina or with a low testosterone level.
Re:If only (Score:4, Interesting)
War. Is. Hell.
We're not at war. Just ask the Commander in Chief. This was one answer he's given recently "I call it a military conflict, because it's small potatoes for us"
My serious response to your comments: I have a hard time being convinced this was a "fog of war" thing. Fog implies lack of visibility. It implies mistakes were made due to quick actions made with imperfect information. Nothing in the article seems to imply that's what happened. They got a target package from AI. The people responsible for verifying the information had long been shitcanned. And against the objections of his senior leadership, the Fox News host killed 150 people. There was certainly fog, but it wasn't the "war" type.
Re:If only (Score:5, Informative)
It was converted ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS AGO.
The changes were visible from space:
"Analysis of satellite imagery shows that the site had been converted into a school by October 2015, when new entrances and perimeter walls were constructed. By 2017, football pitches and assembly areas were visible in the playgrounds, and by 2018, walls around the school compound were painted blue and pink, distinguishing the girlsâ(TM) and boysâ(TM) yards."
https://forensic-architecture.... [forensic-a...ecture.org]
Re: If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of makes you wonder if he lied about it for a reason
Re: (Score:2)
Kind of makes you wonder if he lied about it for a reason
It's getting tiring hearing you call everyone a liar instead of reflecting on the fact that a significant portion of people are just idiots and will believe the lies that they are fed. Not everything is a conspiracy.
Re: If only (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of makes you wonder if he lied about it for a reason
It's getting tiring hearing you call everyone a liar
Feel free to foe me and score my comments down if your feefees are hurt.
instead of reflecting on the fact that a significant portion of people are just idiots
If they're speaking as if they knew facts when they don't, then they're lying about their level of information.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was converted ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS AGO.
I think it is also important to note that this was known very quickly after the attack, but I saw dozens of right wing trolls here, on TV and in the White House saying Iran had used the children as human shields. No one is taking responsibility for any of this.
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I remember looking it up at the time and I'm pretty sure Google Maps had it listed as an elementary school. It certainly is now:
https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
Re:If only (Score:5, Informative)
Stop spreading bullshit. It's been a school for over a decade now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Investigations confirmed that the school had existed as a civilian institution for more than a decade, located close to, but separate from the IRGCN compound.[21] According to satellite imagery, the building housing the school was walled within the IRGCN compound in 2013 and walled off from the rest of the compound by October 2016 at the latest.[11][20][22] Its new external wall had three entrances separate from the rest of the compound, allowing entry without having to pass through the compound, and all were without a military security checkpoint.[22][16] Imagery of a football pitch and assembly areas were visible in August 2017.[11][22][23] By 2018, the school compound's walls were painted pink and blue, distinguishing the girls' and boys' yards respectively.[11]
Given that Iran has been fucked with since 1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I can't imagine why they're hostile to a lot of foreign nations.
Propaganda, meant to happen, or other? (Score:2)
"a cascade of preventable failures that included an overreliance on an AI tool built by Palantir."
On the one hand, this administration is desperate because the mid-terms are coming up and they're so far underwater in the polls that they're pushing up seaweed. They'll say anything and everything to gain even a fraction of an approval point, and are grasping at every straw that might allow them to keep breathing long enough to successfully rig the election. So throwing Palantir under the bus would be psychopath logic.
On the other hand, Thiel and Karp are themselves creepy psychopathic fuckers who support
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one
The simplest explanation would be one which doesn't require invoking AI at all, because AI is a complication and distraction.
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What applicable US law would any of those responsible face? Misfeasance is the only one that comes to mind, and I think that's a state level law.
If you mean the laws SHOULD criminalize and punish this kind of behavior, I agree. They don't for high military or executive branch officials. Not even after they leave office.
Re:Propaganda, meant to happen, or other? (Score:4, Funny)
Throw them in the Hague maybe? Just a thought.
Re: (Score:2)
That will trigger an invasion.
Re: Propaganda, meant to happen, or other? (Score:3)
The USA doesn't recognize the Hague
Or such concepts as justice in general apparently
Wrong focus (Score:5, Informative)
The real reason is cost/staff cutting and not reviewing the strike plans;
"Hegseth dismantled most of the Pentagon’s civilian harm mitigation, or CHM, units — cutting headcount across a number of teams by roughly 90% to fewer than 20 staff members, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Centcom’s team was reduced from 10 to 1.
No CHM team member reviewed the Minab site before the strike, according to officials involved in the internal investigation. That was a consequence of the cuts in staffing but also a decision not to involve the group in planning and operations..."
Is it though? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole selling point of AI is that you'll need less staff which means less human oversight. Well, fucking oops.
Re:Is it though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except in this case it has nothing to do with the AI. Neither the orange shitgibbon nor his goons nor his buddies in Israel consider Iranians people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Wrong focus (Score:5, Informative)
To top it all off that motherfucker Mike Johnson ended the session early to prevent an impeachment vote for Hegseth. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p... [pbs.org]
Why do republicans not want to work anymore?
Re: Wrong focus (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Republicans believe the average American to be an uninformed lout. That none of this will ever come back to their party. That they can simply pivot away, stir up a new crisis, and we will all forget.
Re: Wrong focus (Score:3)
Which they know because they kept the receipts from when they fucked up education to make them stupid
Re: Wrong focus (Score:5, Interesting)
That's probably because the average American Republican voter is an uninformed lout who will never blame or hold Republicans accountable for the outcome of their policy. They will simply deflect each crisis to the Democrats or Immigrants.
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Prosecute any crimes, regardless of party, to the fullest extent of the law.
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Because Republicans believe the average American to be an uninformed lout.
Were they wrong? I mean look at the last election results.
Re:Wrong focus (Score:5, Insightful)
Minimizing civilian casualties is of course always important if you want to even pretend to be a civilized country. But in this case it was, and I'm using the past tense there on purpose, even more important. Before the US started this war, Iran had an aging, sickly, increasingly-unpopular leader who probably would have been dead in a few years from natural causes. But as long as he remained alive and in power, he was a focal point for Iranian dissidents, and if the goal really was to encourage those dissidents, then he should have been left exactly where he was. But the US killed him, an enormous mistake -- because then he became a martyr. And then made an even worse mistake by killing over a hundred schoolchildren, because Hegseth et.al. cut staff in a critical area. Which means that even the dissidents, and the people who might be inclined to support them, now have a greater evil to focus on: the US. Any chance of the US fomenting a popular uprising resulting in regime change disappeared in that moment. That wasn't merely an enormous mistake, it was a catastrophic blunder -- and the consequences are going to last a long time.
So as a human being, I'm appalled by this completely avoidable tragedy. As a strategic thinker (I hope) I'm convinced that it will have dire consequences for the future.
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On the upside, through destructive testing we now have a datapoint on the effectiveness of civilian harm mitigation.
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Sounds like plain criminally negligent homicide on mass-scale to me.
The Legitimate Concerns of AI in Warfare Came True (Score:5, Insightful)
Distributed responsibility and transparency (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an example of one of the legitimate challenges facing the increased integration of AI into warfare.
The more fundamental problem is distributed responsibility and lack of transparency.
Until recently, drone strikes required a long sequence of command decisions, starting with intel gathering, analysis, decision, orders, and remote command of the device. No one is directly responsible when something goes wrong, the failure is distributed among many players with the result that no one has to bear the consequences.
For example, the "collateral murder" [wikipedia.org] incident, where apache helicopters gunned down civilians and journalists.
In normal situations, we have Derek Chauvin [wikipedia.org], who was an individual who caused the death of one man. He went to trial, the evidence was examined, and guilt was assigned. Trials are more-or-less held in the public light, and journalists and interested parties can examine court records and in some cases reanalyze evidence (not all physical evidence is kept or available, but for example, DNA evidence can sometimes be reexamined).
That's how it's supposed to happen.
Contrast that with erroneously ordered drone strikes that hit civilians instead of legitimate targets.
I suppose the biggest, most egregious example would be George Bush taking the country to war because Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction", and of course one were found, and the security services swore up and down that they told him there were none, but he stated "well, the message didn't get through".
And skated responsibility. Completely.
To bring this closer to home, software engineers implement all sorts of insecure, inconvenient, and privacy violating features with no moral pushback. Even if it's completely obvious that something is an anti-feature, people do it because a) their job depends on it, and b) it's someone else's decision. And if there's a breech and ten million social security numbers get made public, the company simply fixes the problem and continues. No responsibility is assigned.
I was satisfied to see videos of the "narco terrorist" boats get destroyed, and then the survivors killed. Not the actual killing, but just knowing that the event was recorded and analyzed in the public sphere, and there was a conversation about it, and it was investigated. That seems like it was handled the right way.
Death is permanent, it can't be undone. If we're going to kill people, regardless of whether it's AI or anything else, it should be transparent and put into the public discourse.
No one is assigned blame for screwing up, that's the more fundamental problem.
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"narco terrorist" boats get destroyed, and then the survivors killed ... and it was investigated
Citation needed.
I've mainly seen people, including Hegseth, cheering these deaths like it was a video game.
We've committed multiple war crimes, and the only result is that a bunch of low-level workers, many of whom were on the boats because their families were threatened, are dead.
Nothing has happened to the drug lords.
Nothing has happened to the drug supply; the price in the US is unchanged.
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Nothing has happened to the drug supply; the price in the US is unchanged.
The demand has not changed significantly either.
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I was satisfied to see videos of the "narco terrorist" boats get destroyed, and then the survivors killed. Not the actual killing, but just knowing that the event was recorded and analyzed in the public sphere, and there was a conversation about it, and it was investigated. That seems like it was handled the right way.
Death is permanent, it can't be undone. If we're going to kill people, regardless of whether it's AI or anything else, it should be transparent and put into the public discourse.
No one is assigned blame for screwing up, that's the more fundamental problem.
Fuck you.
AI & PMCs s make handy scapegoats (Score:2)
i see 2 possibilities ... (Score:3)
- unchecked ai mistake
- deliberate targeting now brushed under the rug of unchecked mistake
those girls killed were mostly daughters of irgc officials. it seems reckless and counterproductive, which it is, but if you want to deal a devastating blow to crush any opposition and believe that it will work, it becomes a plausible decision. it's right there in line with killing a head of state who is at the same time the revered leader of an entire major religion, along with a good part of his family and entourage, threatening officials with killing their whole families if they don't defect, not to mention routine bombing of hospitals, refugee camps, double tapping and deliberate killing of first responders, medical staff, journalists, civil servants, police, starving populations to death or blowing up entire city blocks for a single assasination target.
i am still on the fence. not that it matters, though, whether it was deliberate or not the danger of automating these kinds of operations is pretty obvious. it should not be a valid excuse or exonerating in any way. then again ... i don't think that really matters to people for who such war crimes are business as usual, and routinely get away with it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: i see 2 possibilities ... (Score:2)
How much evidence of this do we need? Blowing up those boats and then killing some of their crews should have proved it. We are the international criminals. We are the bad guys.
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Well, possibly. If so, this should get everybody involved life sentences. But we do not even seem to be able to prosecute child rape against the felon-in-chief.
Also need to add that this failed spectacularly. The Irak war cannot be won by the US. All the US can try is to bribe them now.
It was not me, it was the AI! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This is how (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is how (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems like the issue of AI hallucination is widely promulgated and widely known. I mean, this site has an overrepresentation of technicians who tend to think of highly esoteric tech information as common knowledge just because they work with it every day.....but I don't think this quirk of AI behavior is in that category.
And yet, people keep making this same mistake precisely where it matters. We get stories like this every other day. I have seen it at my own job, where my own boss who still has some semblance of technical talent was downplaying the risk of AI hallucination in a pipeline that would have the AI directly manipulating mission critical data prior to an import.
It is surreal how people want the AI hallucination problem to just stop being a problem the moment it is inconvenient for them. People who should know better let their wish for a reliable AI override their knowledge that AI is not reliable, and they just move forward with it.
I fear things are going to get worse, because we really seem to be failing to learn the obvious lesson here.
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People who should know better let their wish for a reliable AI override their knowledge that AI is not reliable, and they just move forward with it.
Non technical people think even less, and are obviously less knowledgeable yet they too believe the squawk box without question. It’s so much easier to not have to think, as if it’s trying to flex an atrophied limb that now just causes pain on any attempt.
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There are highly technical people right here on Slashdot angrily insisting that everyone else is wrong about AI hallucination because, I presume, they are tired of thinking and also too stupid to recognize that AI is not. They engage in magical thinking and then appeal to technological explanations of how the LLMs work as if that were relevant when we know so little about how the brain works. We are currently at the level where we can only model very simple brains, and badly. They are certainly doing things
Incompentence (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking AI without some sort of verification and guardrails is pure unadulterated incompetence.
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Guardrails would invalidate the Nuremberg defense [wikipedia.org]
.
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Everyone who can remove "guardrails" does eventually remove them.
Local police stations removed them to search flock cameras for tits.
Most certainly the military removed them to search for targets.
I also have an "uncensored" model or two in case I need information on topics that someone finds "sensitive".
You surely don't believe that the dario andropic, scam slopman, elona or cuckerberg develop their plans for world domination with censored models.
So Palantir *and* the DoD (Score:3)
are both guilty of war crimes. How 'bout a trillion dollars in blood money to the parents?
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How 'bout a trillion dollars in blood money
Why not? After all, it won't be coming out of their pockets.
You don't need AI to screw up targeting (Score:3)
We've been doing that for years [wikipedia.org]. AI allow you to fuck up much faster and more efficiently however.
Murder by LLM ... (Score:3)
Should still get them life-sentences.
Who is accountable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody? Honest mistake? I guess nobody has to take responsibility for anything anymore. THANKS AI!
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Are you American and eligible to vote? If so, then you are. That's what the very first line of your constitution, "We the people" means. It's a declaration of popular sovereignty, the idea that political power originates with the citizens.
If you voted for the president or representatives who placed Hegseth in power then you're extra responsible. Ditto if you didn't try to recall for those representatives or if you don't vote in the next election for the candidate most likely to ship off anyone involved to b
Voting doesn't matter - it never did (Score:2)
Plus my votes potentially won't count in the next election. (all mail ballots)
I do protest, and I do encourage everyone to be prepared both mentally and financially for a general strike. Because I believe it to be the only way to force representatives to listen to We the People.
Hegseth Disbanded the Civilian Protection COE (Score:5, Insightful)
To better understand the Maven system, I highly recommend reading the book, "Project Maven" by Katrina Manson. In it she does a deep dive into the history of Maven, what it can and cannot do, and how it can be misused in the wrong hands. Maven was never intended to be a stand-alone targeting system, and the people who created it were very aware of the deficiencies of relying solely on an AI system to make military decisions. It is a great read for any military nerd who wants to understand the history of AI in military planning, and why these systems were created.
I think the blame can be correctly applied to Pete Hegseth, and Donald Trump for ordering this war, and for ordering the military to stop considering "collateral damage" when making targeting decisions. Pete Hegseth bragged about the military striking 13,000 targets in the first month of the Iran war. This is only possible if you forgo the traditional target development process, and strike targets based on thin or no current intelligence, no collateral damage analysis, and no weaponering (selecting appropriate ordnance for the target) considerations. It appears the military just took a long list of potential military targets and ordered strikes on all of them without any verification or thought of how those destroying those targets ties into a greater military strategy. This retired military officer believes that violence was the military strategy.
In my opinion, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and their many acolytes believe that violence is how you win human conflict, and the side that is more violent will win. Military officers who do not share his world view are suspect, possibly woke, and have to be purged. In his word view all targets are good military targets, even civilians, if their deaths result in the desired outcome, regime change in Iran. It is the same world view that has taken over policing of minority communities in America, ICE enforcement to include shooting down protesters, or Israel's military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. What military history teaches us is that unmitigated violence doesn't win wars, but only prolongs them and turns them into multi-generational wars.
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What military history teaches us is that unmitigated violence doesn't win wars, but only prolongs them and turns them into multi-generational wars.
If we consider the attack on the school as a deliberate action then it fits in neatly with prior deliberate actions regarding Iran, which had the effects of plunging them into chaos, which was what we wanted. Keeping war with Iran eternally on the table is beloved by all warhawks, of which there's an ample supply on "both sides" of the aisle — while on some topics there are two sides in Congress, funding the MIC is not one of them.
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....Keeping war with Iran eternally on the table is beloved by all warhawks, of which there's an ample supply on "both sides" of the aisle — while on some topics there are two sides in Congress, funding the MIC is not one of them.
Every authoritarian regime needs some form of multi-generational conflict to justify their power over the people. Trumpism is a form of anti-democratic, authoritarian-oligarchy that exists only within the context of an eternal conflict. The conflicts only exist to distract the people from Trump and his oligarch's corruption, abuse of power, and outright theft from the American people.
No biggie tho... (Score:2)
They were just brown people anyway. So far as peety, alexi, peety, and donnie are concerned, that's just a bonus achievement unlock... more points to score from the base and a nice bronze trophy icon to go with their gamertags.
LIke attracts like (Score:2)
Next stop, total war! (Score:3)
find it weird how basics are ignored.skipped (Score:2)
find it weird how basics are skipped when building products like this...
Logic would say if you're trying to automate a process... you first learn the process that you're trying to replicate and improve on.
The current process for target packages checks the age and accurancy of the intel that is being used.
THAT IS WHY THE INTEL GUYS THOUGHT IT WOULD FLAG OLD AS SHIT AND WORTHLESS INTEL. not- "no idea why they would think that". They would have assumed that because it's a basic element of building ta
Re:find it weird how basics are ignored.skipped (Score:4, Insightful)
Lesson from all this - when rolling out AI, treat it like a new employee. Train it, test it, validate it, increase it's scope of impact/reponsibility over time as confidance builds.
No, that is not the lesson, and if you think it is then you have learned literally nothing.
The actual lesson, assuming we can buy the official story which is not a given, is that there are some tasks you can never entrust to AI.
AI is fundamentally untrustworthy because its imitation of human thought, which is itself believed to be similar to human thought only by suckers employing supposition, in addition to its many other failings substitutes random numbers for intuition. Whatever so-far-ineffable process we use for sanity checking simply does not exist in LLMs. Therefore an LLM can never be reliable. The AI that you trained, tested, and validated can do the right thing ten or a hundred or a thousand times and then still completely fuck it up the next time in a way that a human would not, and still present the results with confidence.
Until you understand this you are not even vaguely close to understanding the dangers of "AI". You can never trust it and everything it does has to be validated.
The "right" way to use AI in a context like this is not to have it making target recommendations. It's to have it do tasks like image processing to assist a human in doing that job, which is too important to leave up to software for two reasons: One, the software is an idiot in the old school sense of the word, and two a human must be responsible for every decision.
The people who decided to put the AI in charge of this decision should be held accountable for the murders of children.
Adding evidence to my claim (Score:2)
...that there is nothing to fear from the AI tech itself
There is A LOT to fear from people who use AI
The AI critics are focusing on the wrong problem
No justice for ICC dodgers (Score:2)
And when will these American war criminals be brought to justice then?
"I didn't make the ingredents..." (Score:3)
A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company "is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies"
That's like a chef saying he's not responsible for poisoning people when he used spoiled food, because he didn't raise the animals or grow the crops. He still made the choice to cook using them with their questionable quality. The diner isn't always able to see all issues before they consume the dish.
Re: Gee (Score:5, Informative)
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Old data or incorrect data?
What the fuck do you mean "or"? It was old and incorrect. The only question to be answered is whether or not its use was intentional.
Everyone knows that evil regimes don't follow any sort of rules of engagement or military codes of conduct like the West does.
AHJAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAhAHAHaHHA HA HAH AH AHA HAH HAHAHAHAH
Pete Hegseth would like to have a word with you. He heard you were smuggling drugs and he's going to have your boat blown up and then have you fired on instead of rescued as it sinks, you fucking nationalist clown. And then congress will recess instead of holding him accountable. Whoops! That happened already, excep
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Like these ones? [mfan.org] The US department of defence operates more than a hundred schools, many of them on military bases. They pretty much all have hospitals too.
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The Iranians had a military HQ next to a girls' school. That's the real war crime.
Look who knows nothing whatsoever about military bases but still wants to flap their stupid face.