AI machine called Lavender directed Israel’s bombing spree of civilians in Gaza

By Yuval Abraham, April 3, 2024
Lavender is an AI-based system to create human targets, to mark them. So, what it did, at its peak, according to sources who have used it, it managed to mark 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza as suspected low-level Hamas or Jihad militants.

Now, the way it works is, for people who don't know, like the machine scanned most of the population in Gaza, collecting surveilling information, and it gave each individual a rating between 1 to 100 based on how likely the machine thought that individual belonged to a military wing.

It has a list of indicative features, which are really small signs that could be like somebody is in a WhatsApp group with a militant or somebody that replaces phones all the time that raise or lower your rating.

Now, sources said, and this is very, very important, that this machine, when they were using it, the IDF knew that in approximately 10% of the cases, it was making what was regarded as errors. So, it was marking people who were complete civilians or had a very loose connection to Hamas. It is an automatic system that looks for these targets when they enter their family houses. So, it scans thousands of people that were marked by Lavender by the AI machine and it alerts the intelligence officers the moment they enter their house.

And the Israeli military, according to numerous sources, carried out a policy of bombing these people using unguided missiles when they were in the most civilian spaces, when they were inside family houses, collapsing the house on itself and killing often, according to sources, the predetermined limit was up to 20 Palestinian civilians at the beginning of the war, per AI-marked junior suspected Hamas operatives.