The First War with Artificial Intelligence: Civilian Casualties and Unprecedented Tests of Military Technology

SadaNews - The recent military operation in Iran, dubbed "Epic Anger", has sparked widespread controversy regarding the role of artificial intelligence on the battlefield, following the death of 110 children and dozens of civilians in a bombing that targeted an elementary school in Minab, raising questions about the extent of reliance on automated systems for critical decision-making, according to the Times.

During the first 24 hours of the operation, U.S. forces struck more than a thousand targets using advanced artificial intelligence systems, at a rate of nearly 42 targets per hour, prompting experts to question whether machines are now controlling the course of war, while the human mind struggles to keep up with this level of speed and accuracy.

Increased evidence indicated that the strike on the "Good Tree" elementary school, which was part of a compound belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, resulted in a large number of casualties, despite the school being separated from the compound by a wall for nine years. Satellite images show colorful murals and a small playground, raising the possibility that automated systems relied on outdated data to identify targets.

According to Noah Sylvia, a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute: "If the bombing of the school was a mistake, was it a human error or the result of the automated system's speed? Did it rely on outdated data? Or did the machine carry out the operation automatically? The number of strikes we observe supports the idea that targets are being identified almost independently."

Dr. Craig Jones, a lecturer in geopolitical studies at Newcastle University, noted that the artificial intelligence may have failed to recognize the school as a school and considered it a military target, adding that any human decision to carry out the strike was based on analyses and information gathering that assisted the artificial intelligence in producing it.

He added: "Whatever the ultimate truth, the strike represents a catastrophic intelligence failure, whether driven by artificial intelligence or executed by humans with the aid of an automated component."

Pentagon sources confirmed that investigations are still ongoing to determine whether the information provided about the school was outdated, while U.S. President Donald Trump hinted, without providing evidence, at the possibility of Iranian or other involvement. However, analyses suggest that American weapons were used in the operation.

The United States and Israel employ several artificial intelligence systems in their military operations against Iran, most notably the "Maven" project that Washington has developed since 2018 with the help of Palantir for data collection and analysis, which is integrated into all U.S. military commands.

Experts see the use of artificial intelligence as akin to a "military version of Uber", where it contributes to targeting and surveillance, but the final decision remains with humans. Nevertheless, the speed at which thousands of targets are proposed daily poses significant risks, including what is known as "automation bias" and "bias toward execution", where the machine's decision becomes an authority that surpasses human abilities in legal and ethical assessment.

Ilke Schwartz, a professor of political theory at Queen Mary University of London, expressed her concern that the future could witness an expansion of artificial intelligence's tasks to preemptively identify targets and suspicious behaviors, which could lead to preemptive strikes, asserting that artificial intelligence will become an increasing factor in the decision to use force and initiate conflicts, which is extremely alarming.