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Posted by devonnull 6 hours ago

Pentagon says overreliance on AI contributed to missile strike on Iran school(www.bloomberg.com)
https://archive.ph/0V37g
356 points | 184 commentspage 4
Dansvidania 4 hours ago|
a random musing:

I often see the argument "humans make mistakes too" when talking about AI, self driving cars, autonomous drones and such...

yes, they do, but most of the time they go to trial, there are consequences, there might even be justice.

when AI/self driving cars/drones make mistakes, which might very well be more rare in absolute [citation needed], there is (seems to me) a tendency to shrug it off, almost as if it were force majeure.

is it just me?

underlipton 5 hours ago||
Never so happy to see such an obvious scapegoat get thrown under the bus. I don't buy it for a second, but no tears will be shed if the stock market does.
RIMR 5 hours ago||
I don't want to see the Pentagon try to pass the blame here, but I am all for giving half the blame to Palantir.
verdverm 5 hours ago||
time to make Palantir the next Flock

France gave them the boot, you can too

chrisjj 3 hours ago||
A great example of the primary use case for this so-called AI tech: substitute for competence.
ChrisArchitect 4 hours ago||
Title: Inside the AI "Kill Chain" That Destroyed an Iranian School

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49763739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761106)

https://archive.ph/0V37g

cpursley 5 hours ago||
They are also openly and proudly using this system along with Starlink to assist Ukraine, who a couple months ago killed a bunch of teens in a college in East Ukraine under very similar circumstances that a simple Google or Yandex maps search would have red-flagged plus on the ground real human intel. Unless the point was actually to kill kids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Starobilsk_strike

allknowingfrog 5 hours ago||
I think your source is undermining your claim. That Wikipedia article strongly suggests that the whole event was fabricated by Russia.
phainopepla2 3 hours ago|||
No, it doesn't
allknowingfrog 2 hours ago||
The third sentence: "Neither Reuters, the United Nations, or other western countries were able to independently verify any claims about the incident."

The fifth sentence: "Several UN members requested access to the area for verification, which was not provided".

I have no idea what actually happened, but it sure sounds like the Wikipedia article has some doubts.

cpursley 4 hours ago|||
Okay, that one is fake because Russia bad. Iran one is real because Orange man bad. Same ISR and targeting systems. Mental gymnastics is a hell of thing.
FireBeyond 5 hours ago||
Says the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, which then immediately refused to allow the UN access to verify the claim.
ceejayoz 5 hours ago|||
The account in question has a history of being… deeply credulous of Russian claims.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441817

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559017

etc.

cpursley 4 hours ago||
Thank you for reminding me about these posts, time has proved my statements true. Especially after the Iran war exposed these outdated systems via direct hits on US bases, which can't be narrative'd away like in Ukraine.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago||
> time has proved my statements true

The S-400 is fairing well? F-35s apparently walked all over Iran's air defense network without much challenge.

> Especially after the Iran war exposed these outdated systems via direct hits on US bases…

Interception rates have been extremely high. The problem, of course, is the ammo shortage and drone cost asymmetry. Which has been widely documented, and presents an issue for the S-400s too.

chews 5 hours ago||
nice, Karp really reeled in a nice big fish, and ofcourse he is going to blame OpenAI/Anthropic for giving the targets, this explains his CNBC rants about the frontiers, his tool was the trigger in a killchain of hallucination.
vfclists 5 hours ago|
The one that pulls the trigger bears the responsibility.
jacquesm 5 hours ago||
No. That's too easy on the higher ups, they never pull triggers.
derektank 5 hours ago|||
Completely disagree. When we’re talking about something like air, missile, or artillery strikes, the operator of the weapon system may literally never even see the target, on a screen or otherwise. They may simply be entering targeting information provided to them by an operations center. These decisions are social and group decisions, with distributed responsibility, which is why it’s so important to have institutions like the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence which historically has identified and helped implement the policies which prevent these kinds of disasters, but which unfortunately the current administration decided to shut down without a replacement.

Sometimes, the difference between a successful strike on a lawful combatant and disaster is one analyst pointing out that the building the enemy is hiding in is next to a square that’s used for a market on Tuesdays and wouldn’t you know it, it’s Tuesday. That’s not something the person “pulling the trigger,” can always be expected to know, which is why every ops center needs to be designed to elevate those voices, when the time comes

mito88 5 hours ago||
the operator was following orders...
esseph 5 hours ago|||
The one that pulls the trigger is often not the one doing any targeting, especially on a strategic strike weapon like a tomahawk. They are receiving a target data package with preprogrammed instructions. Their role is far more... mechanical. They're not seeing the targets at all.
verdverm 5 hours ago||
I would argue `s/pulls the trigger/gives the go ahead/` is intuitively more appropriate. The sailor on the boat that fired off the tomahawk (iirc) was likely not in a position to make an in-the-moment determination
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