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

974 points · 553 comments · devonnull

  1. legitster · · 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 · · 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. rurp · · focus · HN ↗
        Great point. Less deadly but just as incompetent was the utter failure to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when gas was cheap for a year leading up to this war of choice; a war that was certain to massively disrupt global energy markets. Energy disruptions had been an obvious consequence to every expert and non-expert who had looked at attacking Iran for decades. Yet the people who chose to start the war managed to be caught completely off guard by that.

        Just like clowns in charge were caught off guard by the fact that Iran has a drone program, resulting in the loss of dozens of air frames and much of our strategic munition stockpiles. Iran literally jump started Russia's drone program in a high profile way, and yet trump/hegseth somehow completely failed to plan for how to counter those drones and had to resort to lobbing scarce multi-million interceptor missiles at them and watching our bases take heavy damage.

        These are just some of the failures we know about. The administration has been extremely tight lipped about these failures and there are surely many more that aren't common knowledge. Who knows how many hundreds of other children have been needlessly killed outside of the school strike.

        1. mainecoder · · focus · HN ↗
          from the perspective of an oil company when the price of oil goes up they make more money generally even if they sell less volume, it is in their interest that oil does not become to abundant that the price falls it is in their interest even if the economy suffers since oil is essential to many there will not be other option but to fill gas to go to work and they want to make the most money then even if eventually other energy alternatives start being considered since the executive team things about the bonus this year not next year or they year after that THIS year and what can be done THIS QUARTER
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