“A chatbot did not kill those children. People failed to update a database, and other people built a system fast enough to make that failure lethal.”

Maven, the program Google was forced to pull out of and Palantir took over, was the system that identified the girls’ school as a target.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying

#tech #google #palantir #iran #iranwar #politics

AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity

The Guardian
@parismarx a country with a historical record for murdering children decided to murder more children.

@parismarx Accountability laundering is not a new problem in tech,¹ but LLMs are making it a thousand times worse because they are specifically designed to mimicry humans and human agency.

¹ Remember how Facebook claimed it wasn't their fault Cambridge Analytica collected personal data of hundreds of millions of people and used it to convince entire countries to vote for fascists? They claimed they told CA to delete the data, but let them keep the models trained on it.

@parismarx "the people refining the technique of bombing stopped asking what the bombing was for" from Sherry's 1987 book about 1944.

@parismarx

International Law needs updating.

The use of #AI in any military operation, particularly where it involves a decision resulting in fatal outcomes, should be treated as a #WarCrime.

@parismarx there might also, MAYBE, be a little bit missing about human eyes and knowledgeable brains evaluating the targets before the missiles fly. Maybe.
@parismarx
Did that system work on it's own or it was controlled by someone else in computers.