The Israeli military used artificial intelligence to help select bombing targets in Gaza. This could potentially lead to a deterioration in the accuracy of strikes and the killing of many civilians. This is stated in the publications of +972 Magazine and Local Call.
The system, called Lavender, was developed after the October 7 Hamas attacks. At its peak, Lavender identified 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza as suspected «Hamas militants» and «authorized» their killing.
The Israeli armed forces denied the existence of such a kill list. The spokesperson said that artificial intelligence was not used to identify suspected terrorists, but did not deny the existence of the Lavender system, which the spokesperson called «simply tools for analysts in the process of identifying targets». «analysts must conduct independent reviews to ensure that identified targets meet the relevant definitions under international law and additional restrictions in IDF» guidelines, the spokesperson said.
However, Israeli intelligence officers told +972 and Local Call that they were not required to conduct independent verifications of Lavender targets before bombing them, but instead effectively served as a rubber stamp for the machine’s decisions. In some cases, the officers’ only role in the process was to determine whether the target was male.
To create the Lavender system, information about known Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives was entered into the dataset. In addition, data on people with close ties to Hamas, such as members of the Gaza Ministry of Internal Security, were also used to train Lavender.
Lavender was trained to identify «features» associated with Hamas operatives, such as being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cell phones every few months, or changing addresses frequently. This data was then used to score other Palestinians in Gaza on a scale of 1 to 100 based on how similar they are to the known Hamas operatives in the original dataset. People who reached a certain threshold were then marked as targets for strikes. This threshold was constantly changing, «because it depends on where you set the bar for who is a Hamas operative»,” said one military source.
According to the sources, the system had an accuracy rate of 90%. Some of the people Lavender identified as targets had names or nicknames identical to those of known Hamas operatives. Others were relatives of Hamas operatives or people who used phones that once belonged to Hamas operatives.
According to knowledgeable sources, intelligence officers were given broad discretion when it came to civilian casualties. At the same time, possible collateral damage among civilians was assumed: 15-20 people when targeting lower-level Hamas operatives, and «hundreds for senior Hamas officials.
Suspected Hamas operatives were also targeted in their homes, as determined by the Where’s Daddy? system. According to officers, the system placed targets identified by Lavender under constant surveillance. They were tracked until they reached their homes, at which point they were bombed, often with their entire families. Sometimes, however, officers bombed houses without checking to see if there were targets inside, killing civilians in the process.
Additionally, the Lavender system is reported to be an expansion of Israel’s use of surveillance technologies against Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Source: The Verge