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. xlayn · 1790107269 · focus · HN ↗
  Now, ask yourself if you want AI taking decisions around your life... it will pull numbers... someone will have a "goal" of 1000 "hits" and there you go, 2-3 months in jail working to check what went wrong...
  But don't worry, the other P AI system will ensure that the first one doesn't do mistakes...
  1. toomuchtodo · 1790113544 · focus · HN ↗
    Lawsuit Says UnitedHealth Used AI With a 90% Error Rate to Deny Care - <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/lawsuit-says-unitedhealth-used-ai-173017952.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/lawsuit-says-unitedhe... - September 18th, 2026
    UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38299921">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38299921 - November 2023 (58 comments)
    <a href="https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Estate-of-Gene-B.-Lokken-et-al_20231114_COMPLAINT.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uplo...
    teravor · 1790118858 · focus · HN ↗
    that smells like bullshit to be fair. if you have a system that makes errors over 90% of the time then you have a system you can leverage to make fewer errors.
    the situation would have to be very particular/contrived for that not to be the case.
    toomuchtodo · 1790119302 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
    1718627440 · 1790180894 · focus · HN ↗
    The word purpose exists to describe something that is independent of it's current behaviour. If you do not mean that, don't use that word.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.