AI [artificial intelligence] weapons systems are already here. Algorithms must not decide who lives and dies. Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows the danger of using AI in warfare. Humans must remain at the center of wartime decisions

 AI (artificial intelligence) in The Guardian

‘When AI is used for targeting, it brings a similar feigned omniscience to killing.’ Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA

Fri 2 Oct 2026

Kenneth Roth

As tech leaders warn about the threats of artificial intelligence, most conjure up images of AI agents running amok, such as hacking systems used to run our critical infrastructure, banks or even militaries. Yet one serious danger is mentioned less frequently – the threat posed by AI–empowered lethal weapons. Fully autonomous versions of these weapons are colloquially known as killer robots.

Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows that, in an important respect, such AI weapon systems are already here. An algorithm has been deciding who lives and who dies.

For more than a decade, governments have been meeting in Geneva to stop the development of autonomous AI weapons. In early September, 128 governments met to approve a report that could serve as the foundation for a binding treaty.

But a collection of lawyers sent by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin teamed up to water it down. Notably, they weakened a provision that requires humans to review military targets developed by AI before a strike.

Fully autonomous weapons remain the focus; the use of AI to determine targets for conventional weapons is not. At risk is the longstanding quest to maintain a “human in the loop” – that is, meaningful or effective “human control” of AI-empowered weaponry.

For many people, talk of killer robots conjures up images of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Terminator. I have often thought about the problem in the context of the Tahrir Square uprising at the height of the Arab spring that led to the ouster of the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak’s fate was sealed when the Egyptian army made clear it would refuse to fire on Egyptian protesters. But killer robots would have had no such qualms. If Mubarak had been able to deploy them, he might have stayed in power.

The negotiators in Geneva are not even addressing this problem. The Trump-Putin lawyers made sure that the agreed report referred only to war, not repression.

Today, amid the drone warfare in eastern Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian troops are experimenting with fully autonomous weapons to overcome jamming of the signals used to control drones. We can expect these nascent deployments to expand.

Yet the “killer robot” metaphor is deceptive. If we look at targeting decisions more expansively, AI has already taken over. In Gaza, the Israeli military is using AI to target Palestinians.

Israel has long monitored phone communications in that territory... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/oct/02/ai-weapons-systems-algorithms-war

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere] 

Secret systems used by Israel in mass killings of Gaza civilians revealed in new film. Testimony from Israeli military insiders involved in surveillance and remote killings features in documentary produced by the Guardian

Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem

Thu 10 Sep 2026

Testimony from 24 Israeli military insiders ​on the secret ​systems used in ​the war on Gaza​ has been revealed in a new documentary film about the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

NAZA, a film from the Oscar-winning Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, was shown at the Venice international film festival on Thursday as the only documentary competing for its prestigious Golden Lion award.

The film’s title comes from an Israeli military acronym used euphemistically to refer to civilians expected to be killed in a military attack. Produced by the Guardian, it features extensive testimony from Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers involved in the surveillance and remote killing of Palestinian civilians.

Interviews were filmed at night on rooftops in Tel Aviv, on the condition of anonymity because of the risks involved in speaking publicly about Israel’s war activities. The appearance and voices of participants in the film were digitally altered to disguise their identities.

The interviewees detail the secret methods used by the Israeli military in Gaza, including AI-based systems built to identify large numbers of potential low-ranking Hamas targets, who were then bombed in their homes at night, in the knowledge attacks would also kill their families.

The Israeli military hacked into phones to identify the location of such targets, and covertly listened into conversations with their wives and children moments before they were all killed.

The film also features first-person accounts about the destruction of neighbourhoods where the Israeli military estimated that up to 25% of residents were still sheltering in their homes, the systematic burning of civilian homes, and the killing of civilians at a food distribution site.

Several interviewees worked in a secret intelligence unit that reports directly to the office of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; one said their mission was to “thwart peace”.

“We made this film out of a sense of obligation to use our position as Israeli film-makers and journalists to examine the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians for which our country is responsible,” Abraham and Szor said in their directors’ statement.

The directors stressed the film’s focus was not on “sporadic war crimes committed by rogue soldiers”. “It is on the orders themselves, the policies, the accepted practices, the language and logic that make those practices possible, and the people who operate within them,” they said. “The system and its cogs.”... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/10/secret-systems-used-by-israel-in-mass-killings-of-gaza-civilians-revealed-in-new-film

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere]  

"In Gaza, Palestinian journalists filming on their phones have provided an indispensable record of a war foreign reporters have largely been prevented from entering. There, picking up a camera is an act of extraordinary courage." Phoebe Greenwood

A man takes pictures of demolished houses in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2023. Photograph: Mussa Issa Qawasma/Reuters

Sunsets, disasters, dinners: we now record them all with our phones. But what is that doing to our souls? 

As a war correspondent, I worked with photographers who said the camera was a buffer between them and reality. It is much the same now as we snap and scroll 

 

Phoebe Greenwood 

Sat 29 Aug 2026

I was sitting on a rooftop in Athens at sunset looking up at Filopappou hill. Athens in August is burning hot. Not so much hotter than London or Paris any more, but the sort of hot that makes it foolish to step out into sunlight before 6pm. Emerging from the air conditioning at dusk, I saw a dense line of silhouettes on the ridge above me. Almost every one of these shadows had its arm raised, holding a cameraphone towards the sunset.

Of all the pretty hills in the Greek capital, Filopappou arguably has the best view. The Acropolis stands directly to its north. To its south, where I sat, the city sprawls out towards the sea and a dark horizon of islands – Aegina, Salamina, Agistri.

Looking up, the wall of tourist photographers reminded me of something: war zones.

I worked as a correspondent covering conflicts and disasters for the Guardian and other newspapers for more than a decade. Over time, every new disaster came to resemble the last: another catastrophic tableau of buildings and bodies with a dense ring of telephoto lenses pointed at it.

Print reporters like me could stay at a distance from the gore and the horror because we could describe it. The photographers had to get as close as possible because they needed a clean shot.

Later, when I asked them about their work over beers at the American Colony hotel bar or tea at Gaza’s now-destroyed Al Deira hotel – how could they do it? Spend their days gazing at suffering? – most said the same thing. The lens was a buffer, a sort of protective forcefield. They weren’t looking at the fatally injured child, they were looking at the image of one.

The illustrious war photographer Don McCullin was wise to the danger in this distance. “I operate not as a photographer but as a human being,” he said in 1983, 16 years before the first cameraphone. “I try to balance what I photograph not as a photographer but as a person, a man, and photography has got nothing to do with it. It is just something I have learned, it is just a way of communicating.”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/29/sunsets-disasters-dinners-record-phones-camera-reality 

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere]

‘Data is control’: what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military’s ties to big tech Our reporting revealed a symbiotic relationship between the IDF and Silicon Valley – with implications for the future of warfare By Noa Yachot

‘In the Gaza Strip, we know that this massive trove of intercepted phone calls was used in airstrikes that killed civilians.’ Illustration: Guardian Design/Photo by Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg/Getty Images

 Tue 30 Dec 2025

In January this year, Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham first reported that Microsoft had deepened its ties to Israel alongside other major tech firms. Since then, the Guardian has published an award-winning series of investigations – in partnership with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call – that has revealed a symbiotic relationship between Silicon Valley and the Israeli military.

One investigation exposed an Israeli mass surveillance program scooping up virtually all Palestinian phone calls and storing them on Microsoft’s cloud services – setting off an inquiry that ultimately prompted the company to cut off Israel’s access to some of its technology. Another story revealed that the Israeli military created a ChatGPT-like tool to analyze data collected through the surveillance of Palestinians. Yet another revealed that Google and Amazon had agreed to extraordinary terms to clinch a lucrative contract with Israel.

I asked Davies and Abraham to discuss what they learned this year – about the role of these technologies in Israel’s assault on Gaza, whether these business ties are sustainable, and what the revelations tell us about how the wars of the future will be fought.

How did Israel’s relationships with these companies change after October 7?

Yuval Abraham: The Israeli military had been fetishizing artificial intelligence and big data for many years – a trend that is very much connected to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, because the occupation generates a lot of data. What changed after October 7 was the scope. The military was looking to bomb hundreds of targets every day in Gaza. Tens of thousands of people were recruited into reserve duty. That meant a huge spike in usage of technological systems. That’s where the big tech companies stepped in.

Harry Davies: There was a huge surge in demand – not just for the storage capacities of the tech companies, but also for the products that they offer to analyze the information used to prosecute a war. What’s valuable for the military is the way in which these services are able to provide what’s known as “blob storage”, which allows them to store and process infinite amounts of raw intelligence information.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/30/israeli-military-big-tech

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

"There are no bomb shelters in Gaza. There are no sirens. And there is no emergency alert app on our phones. And if there was one, there is no phone signal or internet connect most of the time. And there is hardly any electricity to charge our phones. The only shelters we have been running into and living in are schools and hospitals. But even those have been bombed constantly and our families were burnt alive in front of our eyes. Even the areas that were designated as "non-combat zones" got bombed. We live there in tents without access to water or food or clothes." Mosab Abu Toha

Israeli BOMB damage in Gaza 2025

Mosab Abu Toha

@MosabAbuToha

There are no bomb shelters in Gaza. 

 

There are no sirens. 

 

And there is no emergency alert app on our phones. 

 

And if there was one, there is no phone signal or internet connect most of the time. 

 

And there is hardly any electricity to charge our phones. 

 

The only shelters we have been running into and living in are schools and hospitals. 

 

But even those have been bombed constantly and our families were burnt alive in front of our eyes. 

 

Even the areas that were designated as "non-combat zones" got bombed. 

 

We live there in tents without access to water or food or clothes. 

 

Nothing could intercept these 2000 lb bombs as they hit our tents. 

 

No country intercepts the drones either. 

 

The ceiling of our tents could not protect us. 

 

We even do not know when a bomb is falling. 

 

If we survive by chance, the doctors operate on us with no anesthesia and when we are dismissed from the hospital, we cannot find antibiotics or painkillers. 

 

And the world is watching as we tell these stories. 

 

And we continue to scream as we die.