Thread

Pentagon says overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school

974 points · 553 comments · devonnull

legitster · 1790105097 · focus · HN ↗
> It found the U.S. “failed in its obligation to do everything feasible to verify” that the school was a military objective and that the failure “went beyond mere negligence.” The report said the United States “directed the strikes at the building of the school while being aware of a substantial risk of striking a civilian object and acting recklessly as regards the possibility that this would happen.”
Reading the details, "AI" doesn't really seem like the culprit -it's a scapegoat.
The intelligence that it was no longer a military target never entered the target database, the team that was responsible for vetting the target list was gutted, and said team was never even consulted.
The White House wanted 1000 targets and pulled from their database without any due diligence. Whether it was an AI call or an SQL query - this was from pure human maliciousness and incompetence.
1. tombert · 1790129697 · focus · HN ↗
  Something that I feel like I should have realized earlier but didn't until last year was how unbelievably lazy everyone involved is.
  I knew they were stupid, I knew they had positions that I would consider racist, I knew that they were corrupt, but I guess I had assumed that they had worked for their corruption.
  But no, you have RFK Jr.'s HHS lazily having ChatGPT generating anti-vax literature with broken links, you have Trump doing a blanket pardon of literally everyone involved with January 6 [1] apparently because he was too lazy to do any diligence. It's borderline farcical.
  [1] <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/01/22/trump-pardons-jan6-clemency" rel="nofollow">https://www.axios.com/2025/01/22/trump-pardons-jan6-clemency
  1. a_bonobo · 1790130064 · focus · HN ↗
    It is farcical. And then remember what a bunch of clowns the NSDAP's leaders were; the ranting Hitler, the esoteric nonsense of Himmler and Hess, Goering's makeup and fake uniforms, and then contrast that with their actions and impact on history. A clown-show widely mocked during their time, but look at the catastrophic impact they had: just because they're clowns doesn't mean they're not dangerous.
    tombert · 1790130478 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah no argument on any of that really.
    As a kid I had always heard that Hitler was some kind of evil genius. It wasn't until my 20s that I started actually reading about this stuff and NOPE, he was actually a fucking idiot.

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