Technologies of distinction for indiscriminate killing: What can the Israeli war on Gaza teach us about the social meaning of AI

AI is widely viewed as a technology of distinction and personalization. This article challenges this view by looking closely at the Israeli intelligence's use of AI in the Gaza War. Why was AI needed to produce what seems like indiscriminate mass killing of civilians and destruction of whole neighborhoods? Solving the paradox requires understanding technology within the legal, structural, cultural, and moral contexts in which it is embedded. AI was used to dramatically accelerate target production, since the Israeli military has adopted the “lethalness” doctrine (aspiring to maximize killing) but had also embedded international humanitarian law (which requires distinction between military targets and civilians) within its organizational structures, with lawyers in the kill-chain. AI was needed not to personalize treatment but to justify uniform treatment (bombing) by creating personalized justifications . It legitimated mass killing and destruction by automatically fusing and analyzing data to transform thousands of individuals and buildings into “legitimate targets” with individual probability scores (this deviated from traditional intelligence epistemology, requiring cultural work to overcome resistance). Each target was attacked for different reasons, linked to Hamas based on unique data pieces (crafted into unique stories by human officers). This legitimation of mass killing could occur even if the system were error-free. The critical study of AI must then move its agenda beyond errors and bias. AI's social impacts are revealed as more complex than often assumed and not inherently individuating: AI's core affordance of distinction may foster, simultaneously and at different levels, distinction and indiscrimination, individuation and de-individuation.