Polak zabity przez Izrael w Strefie Gazy Zatrzymaj zabójcze roboty!

instytutsprawobywatelskich.pl 3 miesięcy temu

Israeli soldiers killed a Polish volunteer of the American NGO planet Central Kitchen. Damian Soból helped starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Has this shocking attack on a humanitarian convoy been carried out utilizing the artificial intelligence – AI? any thoughts on convenient killing.

On 3 April 2024 the regular paper The Guardian published a text titled: The device did it cold-bloodedly: Israel utilized AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets touching upon the subject of Israeli Defence Force’s usage of the Lavender strategy in Gaza. The device utilized artificial intelligence algorithms and a database listing more than 37,000 people who could be a possible threat to Israel due to their alleged links to Hamas. Life-and-death decisions were made by the Lavender system, with soldiers taking just 20 seconds to authorise the bombing. As a result, tens of thousands of civilians were put in mortal danger.

This brutal digitisation of the killing process, with people reduced to a set of data, poses a serious threat to humanity and our civilisation.

Worth noting is that Israel is the world’s leading military drones exporter. And by 2035, these machines will make up 95% of the air force.

The tragic event of a Pole having been killed in Gaza reminded me that „there is an existential question waiting to be answered concerning whether our civilisation, in the spirit of humanity, is ready to accept the robotisation of the process of depriving people of their lives”. Kaja Kowalczewska covers this in her paper Deadly systems with progressive autonomy – an global legal analysis [original title: Śmiercionośne systemy z postępującą autonomicznością – analiza prawnomiędzynarodowa].

Convenient killing

„Equally discomfiting is the ‘PlayStation mentality’ that surrounds drone killings. Young military personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely utilizing joysticks. Far removed from the human consequences of their actions, how will this generation of fighters value the right to life? How will commanders and policymakers keep themselves immune from the deceptively antiseptic nature of drone killings? Will killing be a more attractive option than capture? Will the standards for intelligence-gathering to justify a killing slip? Will the number of acceptable ‘collateral’ civilian deaths increase?” – ask The Guardian authors in the text A killer above the law?. The article was published in 2010, against a backdrop of the war in Afghanistan, during which the US military deployed drones to carry out lethal operations, including the killing of civilians.

The quote above makes up a motto for the study Convenient Killing: Armed Drones and the ‘Playstation’ Mentality compiled by The Fellowship of Reconciliation. Where did the thought for the title come from? I urge viewing a image of the US Army’s Drone Control Centre area in the state of fresh Mexico.

Fourteen years have passed – and it is becoming more and more convenient to kill. Today, thanks to artificial intelligence and the disappearance of human intelligence.

Nearly 80 years have passed since the end of the Second planet War – modernity and mass murder have come circular to Gaza. The annihilation of the Palestinian nation present reveals the hidden countenance of our modern society. We observe the final solution to the Palestinian question and stay silent.

The killer robots are already here

„The imagination of a planet in which life-and-death decisions will be made by operating independently machines devoid of direct human control must be considered seriously”, inform the authors of the book: Drone War. The Military Deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

How do specified machines work? I urge watching the movie Metalhead, 1 of the Black Mirror series’ episodes. Its creators emphasise that „they are terrified of Boston Dynamics robots. It’s not just that they truly exist, they evoke a real sense of threat in us. Our reptilian brain perceives them as scary due to the fact that they are the first serious threat to human civilisation”.

Killer robots resembling the Metalhead are already here. They assist Israeli soldiers in searching underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip. The machines, semi-autonomous walking robots in the form of a dog, are supplied by US company GhostRobotics.

Acceptance of killer robots will be gradually created by civilian drone applications. The Amazon corp already delivers message this way in 2 US states. This year it is to launch a akin service in the UK and Italy. Let me remind that this concerns Amazon, the company which poses a threat to democracy, as claimed in the findings of the US parliamentary subcommittee on the competition protection investigating the GAFAM monopoly (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft).

„In future there will be no request for control operators, due to the fact that the drone’s software will have a scope of autonomy so large that it will independently choose its own targets, routes, flight, modes of engagement. What’s more, it most likely already exists, its application only awaits the decisions of governments and armies”, writes Błażej Kolański in his book ’What do drones want? From visual novelty to the view of power’ [original title: Czego pragną drony? Od atrakcji wizualnej do spojrzenia władzy]. The author stated so in 2015. 8 years have passed. Blind moles nowadays are presumably looking forward to the release of this software from Pandora’s Box.

Stop Killer Robots

The civilian Affairs Institute is simply a associate of the global Stop Killer Robots (SKR) coalition. We work towards a planet that rejects the automation of killing and alternatively promotes the rule of humane and ethical control over fresh technologies, in peculiar weapon systems utilizing artificial intelligence. We do not consent to machines making unassisted decisions of whom to kill.

The halt Killer Robots run was set up in April 2013 by a group of NGOs afraid about evidence of increased autonomy in weapons systems. These days, halt Killer Robots is simply a coalition of more than 230 community organisations and academic partners operating in 70 countries. The civilian Affairs Institute is the only polish associate within the coalition.

We request a ban on machines that mark humans, reducing us to objects and datasets. We request that governments around the planet start negotiating on a fresh global law regulating issues emerging around autonomous weapons. Unlike conventional weapons, autonomous weapons can be utilized to kill people without any human involvement. Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) is another word for autonomous weapons. Their ability to launch an attack without a human operator is what distinguishes them from conventional weapons.

One of the coalition’s efforts’ results is the first UN resolution on autonomous weapons.

In March this year, we submitted an open letter to the Ministry of abroad Affairs, calling for Poland’s engagement in efforts to ban lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).

Are the policymakers in our country afraid with the demands of the halt Killer Robots coalition? No. For eleven years, no organization or government has been willing to discuss the question of machines killing people without asking for people’s opinions.

Remember, technology should never replace human judgement and ethics. It is advanced time we took definitive steps against LAWS. We request to guarantee that in future no decisions to kill people are made without human control and, most importantly, human responsibility.

Find out more:

  1. Kowalczewska K., Kowalewski J. (red.),Systemy Dronów Bojowych. Analiza problemów i odpowiedź społeczeństwa obywatelskiego, Warszawa, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar, 2015.
  2. Kopeć R., Wasiuta O., Wójtowicz T., Wojna dronów. Militarne wykorzystanie bezzałogowych statków powietrznych, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Pedagogicznego, 2021.
  3. Nahirny R., Kil A., Zamorska M. (red.), Czego pragną drony? Od atrakcji wizualnej do spojrzenia władzy, Gdańsk, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Katedra, 2017.

A full version of the text in Polish Rafał Górski – Polak zabity przez Izrael w Strefie Gazy. halt Zabójczym Robotom!

English language version by Berenika Serwatka

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