AI Error May Have Contributed to Girl's School Bombing in Iran | Hacker News Reader

AI Error May Have Contributed to Girl's School Bombing in Iran

thisweekinworcester.com

72 pointsapolloartemis32 comments

This is not an "AI error". This is a human decision to use known unreliable AI for waging war, in full knowledge that civilian death is an inevitable consequence.

If you decide your strike locations using a pair of dice, it's not a "dice error" when you blow up a school.

But this is not an honest argument:

1) the school was within the security perimeter of an IRGC base

2) it was in a building that was an IRGC control center 3 years ago

3) the road to the school is a road internal to that base

4) the students are from a minority and were forced to go to that school

5) that base was involved in hostilities when it was hit

Let's face facts here: the IRGC explicitly created this situation to try to get exactly this mistake, forced those children into the line of fire.

Btw: that is a war crime. Creating this confusion in the first place is a war crime. On one hand I like that there is a large amount of navel-gazing over this mistake ... but now is not the time.

AND somehow one side in this conflict just gets to give it's orders command to use shoot-to-kill tactics on children without any peep from anyone: https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/06/iran-security-forces-iss...

And that leads us to point 6.

6) the attention this attack is generating is being immediately exploited by the islamic guards to commit more warcrimes against Iranians, to kill children, put more civilians in danger, and even kill patients in hospitals. That, of course, does not seem to justify anyone's attention:

https://www.iranintl.com/en/202602215486

https://x.com/NedzzoneXR/status/2030155455431929914

https://x.com/MTavoli/status/2029881352225452499

https://x.com/Persianr0yalty/status/2024861128946270244 (this child's death doesn't even have anything to do with this conflict, it's just something the IRGC did on a random Friday)

7) and the fact that this generates asymmetric attention is being exploited in hostilities by the IRGC as well. They aren't just committing warcrimes in Iran:

https://x.com/MOHAMMA47949502/status/2030211448006431044

https://x.com/ayca_mls/status/2030233506450641183

https://x.com/IsraelinUK/status/2030227972582416493

In other words: the attention this is generating is directly leading to the killing of Iranian and Israeli civilians. AND THAT IS THE INTENTION BEHIND THIS REPORTING.

This report is a weapon used to commit more warcrimes. Not a reasonable attempt to hold people responsible. It must stop.

And, frankly, do you people even know who you're dealing with when it comes to Iran? Google "plastic keys to heaven", for an explanation how Islam means you can use 6-year-old minority children as cheap demining equipment? That other people's children can be kidnapped and used to figure out where the enemy deployed chemical weapons? (Iraq btw, that's how mullahs fought their first war). Use kidnapped children where snipers are located? Another fantastic islamic mullah invention! Seriously, LOOK IT UP.

The 2 sides just don't compare here. So by all means, investigate the mistake that lead to this attack and try to prevent it. Slowly. Thoroughly. When the situation stabilized. Which means in a month or two. First, give people a chance to end it.

And yes, this might end in disaster. The situation before this conflict started was a disaster already, just not for you personally.

Yes it's 150 girls' fault to have gone to school near a military target. Man, sober up please.

Even when it's the US' fault, it's still everyone else's fault. The superpower with an unrivaled spy and surveillance state with a constellation of satellites and precision missiles with blades that can hit an individual person from across the world is just simply helpless from blowing up a school of children.

"Btw: that is a war crime. Creating this confusion in the first place is a war crime. On one hand I like that there is a large amount of navel-gazing over this mistake ... but now is not the time."

Are you under the impression that the US does not have schools on their own military bases? Would you consider this a war crime as well? If they get bombed, would you shrug it off as collateral wartime damage?

Right and I'm sure if a family at a US army base commissary or movie theater were to get blown up by Iran tonight you'd accuse the US of a war crime and let Iran off the hook, right?

Predicted yesterday.

> Target schools, blame vendor instead of operators.

> I fully expect this.

> Based on industry experience, where vendors were hired (and paid well) so that there would be, and I quote, "a throat to choke" when needed.

This could be the feeler for a full-on buck-passing.

The first refuge of a scoundrel is to blame someone else. "We didn't kill those kids. Faulty AI did it." A "perfect" setup. Or do you believe in a string of 10 accidental coincidences?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47271391#47271572

     "The immediate theory is that the AI program included the
     school’s position based on older, archived intelligence. 

     The logic behind the launch, and the mechanics of who
     authorized it is unclear."

Is this a "We don't know what's in the black box" scenario?

It is a way to absolve responsibility

Companies are spending billions so they can say the dog ate their homework.

The State* is spending billions so it can say the dog pulverized the school children.

Easier and cheaper to just say "they were Hamas/Hezbollah".

It’s an online-only local news site/blog for Worcester, MA. Seemingly all stories are credited to two writers.

There is literally no information about the site, who runs it, the writers etc.

There are no named sources in the story. It is, however "an exclusive".

Huh.

I bet Anthropic has logs of whatever prompt was used to determine targeting the girls elementary school and can find out if they were directly responsible for their deaths through AI.

no they dont but palantir does.

This AI risk is the same as with Tesla's Autopilot a couple years back...

People believe for some reason that the AI is 99.99% correct and the warning not to trust it too much is just legalese.

> People believe for some reason that the AI is 99.99% correct and the warning not to trust it too much is just legalese.

That "some reason" is science fiction plus some modern-day hype. The sci-fi trope of AI is that it's something more intelligent and perfect than any human (e.g. Data from Star Trek or even HAL, despite his malfunctions), and the people who are selling LLMs are happy to let influence people to over-estimate LLM capabilities.

There's no sci-fi model for subhuman and kinda crappy generative AI.

This resolves nothing.

The one side will claim unintentional target, scapegoating the AI in the process.

The other side will claim the AI is a scapegoat.

Both sides can be true at the same time, regardless of whether it was intentional, AI error or human error.

I suppose they are vibe-targeting now

What's up with sites detecting adblock and popping up modals so you can't even interact with the page anymore?

Firefox and Chrome on Android.

Guess that's hint enough that this outfit is garbage and not reputable. Flagged and added to domain block lists.

Works for me with Firefox/mac and a ton of extensions.

In most cases, using a "reader" mode, either built-in or as an extension, gets rid of the popup, and then disabling javascript.

I usually save articles as pdf and various print style sheets very often take care of annoyances.

The final boss of "I don't look at the code"

The final boss of "I don't care about nonwhite human lives"

The statement is complete speculation, there is no proof at all. And mistarting was a thing way way before ai.

This website doesn't even load correctly.

Funny how Anthropic's press team has been working overtime to ensure the public they're the AI on the right side of history, yet that's anything further than the truth...

When you choose to serve the American military, knowing both its history and the fact that it's been facilitating at least one genocide over the past few years, you can't just claim "we didn't want anything bad to happen".

Now the politics mix with everything

Wasn’t Hegseth pretty clear that the logic behind murdering Iranian children was to prove that he isn’t “woke”?

Indeed. We all know, just based on his proclamation of support for terrorizing the Iranian people the other day, that the US is perfectly willing to target and kill entire schools full of children.

Killing 150+ elementary school girls was no accident. Do not let them get away with claiming it was an "error". They purposely targeted an elementary school filled with little girls to kill them.

the US military has never had any real qualms about murdering innocent civilians; they've just had a problem admitting it out loud to the public.

You'll recall the multiple wedding parties that were massacred by drones during the Obama administration, or the Winter Soldier testimonies from Iraq and Afghanistan ca 2008 or the original Winter Soldier investigation in 1971 or the infamous My Lai massacre ca 1968.

Hegseth is skipping the normal ritual of denial and fake regret but this event is firmly within a well-documented lineage going back decades.

This is NO error buddy! These are all intentional and surgically planned atrocities.

israel has done the same thing over and over in Gaza - bombing and double striking schools, universities, hospitals, aid-workers indiscriminately. Now they are doing the same thing in Iran. Also, it is not just a one time incident. In fact, israeli terrorists in conjunction with Americans just bombed the 6th elementary/primary school in Iran just yesterday!

The crimes of israel and America can’t be sugarcoated anymore. We are not living in 50s, this is 21st century!

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