"Alexa, bomb the Gaza Strip.”

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution has the potential to change our lives in ways that are still hard to conceive. What is certain is that it is signifying a change as radical as the invention of the Internet, or even the combustion engine. In the simplest applications we can find a text generator or even images and videos, but what about the military applications of this new technology?

In 2002 the U.S. Army was already practicing with drones piloted autonomously by an AI capable of entering a building, recording all its rooms and identifying which were occupied by civilians and which by targets to be shot down. In a few minutes a complete picture of the theater of operations was available and the most efficient way to accomplish the mission could be followed. Today, AI technology has come a long way and, like nuclear technology, can be used to illuminate an entire region or to destroy humanity.

The application of AI in the field of intelligence allowed analysts to predict the Russian invasion of Ukraine months before it happened and burst the surprise factor Putin intended.

However the use of AI has not been limited to military training or to achieve peace in Europe, no. Today Israel is using AI in warfare and occupation of Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) uses the Lavander system to identify members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or related individuals, automatically. The AI analyzes all the information on the Gaza population obtained through Israel's massive surveillance for almost two decades. Once it has the information, it gives the population between 1 and 100 points that mark the possibility of closeness to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. With this system, some 37,000 people capable of becoming military targets were identified with a reliability of 90% after being contrasted with human personnel, according to Israel.

Wounded in the Israeli bombardment of Al Ahli hospital, in Gaza, arrive by ambulance to Shifa hospital. EITB.eus

The doubt arises when contrasting the number of civilian casualties with the theoretical accuracy of the IA, since 15,000 Palestinian children and more than 8,000 women have been killed as of the date of publication of this article. The answer is simple, the IDF has decided that the death of 15 to 20 civilians for every low ranking Hamas member killed (100 if it is a position of some importance) is an acceptable ratio and if it is exceeded it does not mean much of a problem either. For these attacks they use so called “dumb bombs” which are unguided projectiles that go to a predetermined area before launching it.

Lavander is an AI specialized in the recognition of people that the IDF combines with the Gospel, another AI dedicated to the recognition of buildings and structures. As published by The Guardian (link):

When it came to targeting low-ranking Hamas suspects, they said, the preference was to strike when they were believed to be at home. “We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,” one of them said. “It's much easier to bomb a family's house. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”

It is essential to establish safeguards to ensure that AI does not cause indiscriminate harm or violate human rights. Transparency, oversight and ethics must guide its development and use in military contexts. That oversight and accountability that is prescriptive for any state in the world, is not being so for Israel. For the United States continues to block any initiative at the UN that even mentions Israel's gross violations of human rights systematically against the Palestinian population, humanitarian workers and human rights defenders. As long as this reality does not change, the “rules-based world” will remain an empty political slogan.