Israel – Hamas 2024 Symposium – AI-Based Targeting in Gaza: Surveying Expert Responses and Refining the Debate

The reported use of artificial intelligence-enabled decision-support systems (AI-DSS), in particular the Gospel and Lavender, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in their military operations in Gaza has been controversial. Allegedly, these two systems are used to identify objects and human targets respectively, and as Israeli experts asserted, they are applied at the “very preliminary stages of the chain of creating, and authorizing, a military target.”

The use of AI-DSS in hostilities has been on the rise with new applications emerging also in the context of the war in Ukraine, for example in drone targeting operations and intelligence gathering and analysis. However, none of these applications has sparked as big an outcry as the recent use of AI-DSS by the IDF. Concern for the massive civilian harm inflicted on the population in Gaza and disagreements as to Israel’s fulfillment of its duties to take precautions in attack and mitigate civilian harm are chiefly responsible for this outcry. Experts are also concerned whether and how the use of AI systems has contributed to the effects of military operations on the civilian populations and what the obligation to take feasible precautions in attack means when leveraging these AI tools in targeting procedures.

In this post, I scope and review expert interventions that emerged in the wake of the IDF’s reported AI-DSS use with the aim to illuminate points of contention and, most importantly, highlight not what we say but how we frame the legal issues. While military professionals and technologies are under scrutiny, I observe that the nature of the AI systems renders invisible the crucial role of AI engineers. In conclusion, I suggest that it is important to avoid exalting either humans or AI when formulating legal arguments on the topic of military AI.