Is the survival instinct found in single cells as exists in humans, and can single cells communicate for the benefit of the group? The answer seems to be yes (see: Reber, Slijepcević et al. 2024 on ResearchGate). Thus (for those who want to extent volition/consciousness to machines), the ability to kill to survive will have to be programmed into machines such that the compulsion to kill (which has been perfected by humans) cannot be undone by the machine.
AI is killing the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for Oct 7th. If The Hague convicts the perpetrators of the killings (on all sides), then it will not be the machines that will be imprisoned/executed—for the lust to kill is not in the genes of the AI machine, even though some have suggested that this might be commonplace in the future (e.g., Geoffrey Hinton 2023).
Controversy around Israel’s AI use in Gaza
"The Israeli army used an AI-powered database called ‘Lavender’ to identify as many as 37,000 people in Gaza as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives and mark them as potential bombing targets, according to six Israeli intelligence officers. The anonymous officers claim that Lavender’s decisions guided air strikes with only cursory human oversight, despite the system mislabelling people around 10% of the time. Other automated systems tracked targeted individuals so they could be killed in their homes at night — leading to the deaths of many family members. The system has resulted in an amount of bombing that is “unparalleled, in my memory”, said one of the officers who used Lavender. “The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.”
In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said that Lavender is “simply a database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources”. “The IDF outright rejects the claim regarding any policy to kill tens of thousands of people in their homes,” it added..."
https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
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