AI Error May Have Contributed to Girl's School Bombing in Iran

(thisweekinworcester.com)

46 points | by apolloartemis 3 hours ago

20 comments

  • readitalready 1 hour ago
    I bet Anthropic has logs of whatever prompt was used to determine targeting the girls elementary school and can find out if they were directly responsible for their deaths through AI.
  • WarOnPrivacy 2 hours ago

         "The immediate theory is that the AI program included the
         school’s position based on older, archived intelligence. 
    
         The logic behind the launch, and the mechanics of who
         authorized it is unclear."
    
    Is this a "We don't know what's in the black box" scenario?
    • muddi900 1 hour ago
      It is a way to absolve responsibility
      • moogly 1 hour ago
        Easier and cheaper to just say "they were Hamas/Hezbollah".
      • EFreethought 1 hour ago
        Companies are spending billions so they can say the dog ate their homework.
  • giacomoforte 1 hour ago
    This AI risk is the same as with Tesla's Autopilot a couple years back...

    People believe for some reason that the AI is 99.99% correct and the warning not to trust it too much is just legalese.

    • palmotea 48 minutes ago
      > People believe for some reason that the AI is 99.99% correct and the warning not to trust it too much is just legalese.

      That "some reason" is science fiction plus some modern-day hype. The sci-fi trope of AI is that it's something more intelligent and perfect than any human (e.g. Data from Star Trek or even HAL, despite his malfunctions), and the people who are selling LLMs are happy to let influence people to over-estimate LLM capabilities.

      There's no sci-fi model for subhuman and kinda crappy generative AI.

  • k310 45 minutes ago
    Predicted yesterday.

    > Target schools, blame vendor instead of operators.

    > I fully expect this.

    > Based on industry experience, where vendors were hired (and paid well) so that there would be, and I quote, "a throat to choke" when needed.

    This could be the feeler for a full-on buck-passing.

    The first refuge of a scoundrel is to blame someone else. "We didn't kill those kids. Faulty AI did it." A "perfect" setup. Or do you believe in a string of 10 accidental coincidences?

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271391#47271572

  • zarzavat 57 minutes ago
    This is not an "AI error". This is a human decision to use known unreliable AI for waging war, in full knowledge that civilian death is an inevitable consequence.

    If you decide your strike locations using a pair of dice, it's not a "dice error" when you blow up a school.

  • lelanthran 1 hour ago
    This resolves nothing.

    The one side will claim unintentional target, scapegoating the AI in the process.

    The other side will claim the AI is a scapegoat.

    Both sides can be true at the same time, regardless of whether it was intentional, AI error or human error.

  • dodomodo 1 hour ago
    The statement is complete speculation, there is no proof at all. And mistarting was a thing way way before ai.
  • michaellee8 1 hour ago
    I suppose they are vibe-targeting now
  • anonymouscaller 1 hour ago
    Funny how Anthropic's press team has been working overtime to ensure the public they're the AI on the right side of history, yet that's anything further than the truth...
    • tdeck 1 hour ago
      When you choose to serve the American military, knowing both its history and the fact that it's been facilitating at least one genocide over the past few years, you can't just claim "we didn't want anything bad to happen".
  • lysace 1 hour ago
    It’s an online-only local news site/blog for Worcester, MA. Seemingly all stories are credited to two writers.

    There is literally no information about the site, who runs it, the writers etc.

    There are no named sources in the story. It is, however "an exclusive".

    Huh.

  • OutOfHere 40 minutes ago
    This website doesn't even load correctly.
  • slopinthebag 1 hour ago
    The final boss of "I don't look at the code"
    • thefz 1 hour ago
      The final boss of "I don't care about nonwhite human lives"
  • stevenhuang 1 hour ago
    What's up with sites detecting adblock and popping up modals so you can't even interact with the page anymore?

    Firefox and Chrome on Android.

    Guess that's hint enough that this outfit is garbage and not reputable. Flagged and added to domain block lists.

  • parvardegr 51 minutes ago
    Now the politics mix with everything
  • walletdrainer 1 hour ago
    Wasn’t Hegseth pretty clear that the logic behind murdering Iranian children was to prove that he isn’t “woke”?
    • readitalready 1 hour ago
      Indeed. We all know, just based on his proclamation of support for terrorizing the Iranian people the other day, that the US is perfectly willing to target and kill entire schools full of children.

      Killing 150+ elementary school girls was no accident. Do not let them get away with claiming it was an "error". They purposely targeted an elementary school filled with little girls to kill them.

      • b00ty4breakfast 58 minutes ago
        the US military has never had any real qualms about murdering innocent civilians; they've just had a problem admitting it out loud to the public.

        You'll recall the multiple wedding parties that were massacred by drones during the Obama administration, or the Winter Soldier testimonies from Iraq and Afghanistan ca 2008 or the original Winter Soldier investigation in 1971 or the infamous My Lai massacre ca 1968.

        Hegseth is skipping the normal ritual of denial and fake regret but this event is firmly within a well-documented lineage going back decades.

  • proshno 1 hour ago
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  • shablulman 2 hours ago
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  • aaron695 48 minutes ago
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