In a recent development, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed serious concern regarding reports accusing Israel of using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify targets in Gaza, resulting in a significant number of civilian casualties. The allegations, detailed in the independent Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972, claim that Israel has employed AI technology to identify targets in Gaza with minimal human oversight, sometimes within just 20 seconds.

Guterres, deeply troubled by these reports, highlighted the potential dangers of delegating life and death decisions to algorithms, particularly in densely populated residential areas. The +972 report further stated that the Israeli army marked tens of thousands of Gazans as assassination suspects using an AI targeting system named Lavender, suggesting a permissive policy for casualties.

According to sources cited in the report, the influence of Lavender on the military's operations was so significant that the outputs of the AI machine were treated as if they were human decisions. The sources further claimed that during the early stages of the conflict, the army authorized the killing of up to 15 or 20 civilians for each junior Hamas operative identified by Lavender. Shockingly, for senior Hamas officials, the army reportedly approved the killing of over 100 civilians on several occasions.

However, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) swiftly rejected these claims, denying the use of an AI system that identified terrorists or predicted a person's affiliation. The IDF explained that they employ a database to cross-reference intelligence sources regarding military operatives of terrorist organizations. They also emphasized that strikes were not executed if the expected collateral damage, which includes civilian casualties, was deemed excessive.

The recent Gaza conflict, the deadliest ever recorded, began in October 2021 when Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack against Israel. As per AFP's tally of Israeli official figures, the conflict resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, mostly civilians. Meanwhile, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory, the retaliatory campaign led by Israel took the lives of at least 33,091 people, predominantly women and children. The United Nations has issued warnings of an imminent famine in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Israel has ramped up its utilization of AI-powered targeting as a result of the 11-day conflict in Gaza in May 2021, with military commanders dubbing it the world's "first AI war." The military chief during the 2021 war, Aviv Kochavi, revealed last year that AI systems were used to identify 100 new targets daily, compared to 50 in previous years. During the recent Gaza conflict, the Israeli military's AI-enhanced "targeting directorate" purportedly identified over 12,000 targets in just 27 days using an AI system called Gospel, which aimed to inflict severe damage on infrastructure linked to Hamas while minimizing harm to uninvolved parties.

Alessandro Accorsi, a senior analyst at Crisis Group, commented on the concerning nature of the +972 report, emphasizing the low degree of human control in the AI targeting process. Johann Soufi, a human rights lawyer and former director of UNRWA's legal office in Gaza, labeled the described methods as "undeniably war crimes," potentially constituting crimes against humanity due to the high number of civilian casualties.

Only recently, Israel publicly acknowledged a series of errors and violations of its rules in the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, admitting that they had erroneously believed they were targeting armed Hamas operatives.

As the debate over the ethical implications of using AI in warfare continues, the international community remains divided on the matter, with heightened calls for accountability and the prevention of civilian casualties in conflict zones.