Israeli officials reveal how AI tools will be used during 2021 Gaza offensive: report

Recent reports claim that the Israeli military is using an artificial intelligence tool called Lavender to Identify bombing targets in GazaA year-old video has surfaced on social media in which an official describes how the country uses machine learning to identify targets.

While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denies that AI is being used to identify terrorist suspects, officials from Israel’s cyber intelligence agency detail how it is used Uses machine learning technology During the 2021 Gaza offensive, The Guardian reports.

Citing the example of “one of these tools,” the official, “Colonel Yoav,” said: “Suppose we have some terrorists forming an organization and we only know some of them… .By practicing our data science magic we were able to find the remaining powder.”

The video was filmed at a conference at Tel Aviv University in February 2023. Interestingly, the meeting was directed not to take any photos of the official or record his speeches.

The official, who is part of Unit 8200, said his unit used machine learning to find Hamas squad missile commanders and anti-tank missile terrorists in Gaza during an IDF military operation in May 2021.

The Guardian quoted an Intel official as saying: “We select the initial subgroups, calculate their closed circles, then calculate the relevant characteristics, and finally rank the results and determine the threshold.”

Feedback from intelligence officials is used to enrich and improve the algorithm, the colonel said. However, he stressed that it was “flesh and blood people” who made the decision. “These tools are designed to help break down human barriers,” the Israeli official further said.

The intelligence official said his department had successfully created more than 200 new targets. Talking about the benefits of AI tools, he said: “Suddenly you can react in combat with data science-driven solutions”.

The colonel’s description bears similarities to recent disclosures by six Israeli intelligence officials to +972 magazine and Hebrew-language media.

Six Israel Defense Forces officials said an artificial intelligence tool called “Lavender” had an error rate of 10 percent and was used to assist intelligence officers involved in the Gaza bombing campaign and identify tens of thousands of potential human targets.

However, the IDF said some of the claims were “baseless”. The Israel Defense Forces denies that artificial intelligence is used to identify terrorist suspects, although it does not deny the existence of the tool.