Thread

1. 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. beloch · 1790109043 · focus · HN ↗

      "In the final days of February, the Trump administration demanded an overwhelming aerial assault. More than 1,000 Iranian targets were hit within the first 24 hours alone. That order compressed the time frame for finalizing targets, the officials said, instilling an urgency that — combined with gaps in underlying information about the site, cuts in civilian-protection personnel and an overreliance on artificial-intelligence technology — set the stage for the deadly error."

      -------------------

      Maven is an untested tool for rapidly selecting targets under time pressure during a war. It's reason for existing is speed. If you're in a shooting war, the ability to select good military targets faster than your enemy, but not necessarily with zero error, is an advantage.

      Planning a first strike is a different situation. Time pressure should not be a significant factor. Humans should have been doing their due diligence on every single target. If an untested tool for rapid mid-battle target selection was relied upon completely because of a hasty executive order, then the responsibility falls entirely on the executive.

      1. stackghost · 1790139795 · focus · HN ↗

         >If you're in a shooting war, the ability to select good military targets faster than your enemy, but not necessarily with zero error, is an advantage.

         I mean, yes and no. Merely selecting the targets is not really an advantage in and of itself. I'm sure Iran could select hundreds of targets in the 48 States at the drop of a hat, but they don't have the air power to hit those targets so the air tasking cycle breaks down.

         The air tasking cycle upon which modern NATO air campaigns are predicated and carried out is a cyclical 6-step process:

         1. objectives not yet met/effects required

         2. target development/selection to deliver those effects/meet those objectives

         3. weaponeering, allocation, prioritization (can a hellfire launched from a drone do this or do we need something more specialized?)

         4. actually write and issue the air tasking orders that cause air sorties to be flown

         5. execution of said ATOs

         6. assessment; GOTO 1

         Normally this is a 72-hour cycle and your ops centre would be running 3+ of these cycles in overlapping fashion so that every 12-24 hours you have one loop reaching the top. AI appears to be in heavy use in the target development step, but there are diminishing returns for speed here. At some point there's just no added benefit for choosing more targets because aircraft can only transit to/from the area so fast. Also the other loops are still running and you're potentially developing targets without knowledge of effects being delivered by the other ATO loops so you're now wasting effort. In other words it's not like a computer where more hertz is better; you might get better results by simply waiting for one of the other cycle's kinetic results that will better inform your own target development stage.

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