The IDF used AI to rapidly refill their “target bank,” a list of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists to be killed during military operations, along with details about their whereabouts and routines, according to a report published in The Washington Post on Sunday.Some experts consider the target bank to be the most advanced military AI initiative ever to be deployed.One such AI tool referenced is called Habsora — or “the Gospel” — which could quickly generate hundreds of additional targets.However, the Washington Post report discusses previously unreported details of the inner workings of the machine-learning program, along with the secretive, decade-long history of its development.The report also revealed a debate within the IDF’s senior echelons about the quality of intelligence gathered by AI, whether the technologies’ recommendations garnered sufficient scrutiny, and whether the focus on AI weakened the IDF’s intelligence capabilities. UNIT 8200 soldiers in action – working with data. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)Some critics argue the AI program has been a behind-the-scenes force accelerating the death toll in Gaza.”What’s happening in Gaza is a forerunner of a broader shift in how war is being fought,” said Steven Feldstein, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, who researches the use of AI in war. “Combine that with the acceleration these systems offer — as well as the questions of accuracy — and the end result is a higher death count than was previously imagined in war.”The IDF said claims that its use of AI endangers lives are “off the mark.””The more ability you have to compile pieces of information effectively, the more accurate the process is,” the IDF said in a statement to The Washington Post. “If anything, these tools have minimized collateral damage and raised the accuracy of the human-led process.”No autonomous AIThe Gospel and other AI tools do not make decisions autonomously, according to an Israeli intelligence official who spoke with The Washington Post. Stay updated with the latest news! Subscribe to The Jerusalem Post Newsletter Subscribe Now Reviewing reams of data from intercepted communications, satellite footage, and social networks, the algorithms spit out the coordinates of tunnels, rockets, and other military targets. Recommendations that survive vetting by an intelligence analyst are placed in the “target bank” by a senior officer.Using the software’s image recognition, soldiers could unearth subtle patterns, including minuscule changes in years of satellite footage of Gaza suggesting that Hamas had buried a rocket launcher or dug a new tunnel on agricultural land, compressing a week’s worth of work into 30 minutes, a former military leader who worked on the systems told The Washington Post.In the Israel-Hamas war, estimates of how many civilians might be harmed in a bombing raid are derived through data-mining software, using image reco
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