Amid Ethical Concerns, Israel's Unmanned Bulldozers Breaking Ground in Gaza War
At first glance, there is nothing unusual about the bulky bulldozer turning up soil at a testing site in central Israel, but as it pulled closer it became clear: the driver's cabin is eerily empty.
This is the Robdozer, a fortified engineering vehicle manned remotely, and in this case operated from a military expo halfway across the globe in Alabama.
Army engineers and military experts say that the Robdozer -- the robotic version of Caterpillar's D9 bulldozer -- is the future of automated combat.
The Israeli military has used D9 for years to carry out frontline tasks like trowelling roads for advancing troops, removing rubble and flattening terrain.
But since war in Gaza broke out in October 2023 and later in Lebanon, the Israeli military has increasingly deployed this robotic version in a bid to enhance its field operations and reduce the risks to its troops.
"The idea is to eliminate the person from the cockpit of the dozer," said Rani, whose team at the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries developed the Robdozer.
During the Gaza war, the military has increasingly opted for the unmanned version, which can carry out a full range of tasks "even better than a human", said Rani, using his first name only for security reasons.
While such vehicles and other systems are currently operated by humans, future versions could be autonomous, raising ethical and legal concerns over the unchartered future of warfare being shaped by the Israeli military in the Gaza war.
Israel's increasing use of advanced technology on the battlefield, from air defense systems to a broad range of AI-driven intelligence tools, has been well-documented but also criticized for inaccuracies, lack of human oversight and potential violations of international law.
Analysts say the growing Israeli deployment of the Robdozer reflects broader global trends towards automation in heavy combat vehicles, like remote-controlled personnel carriers that operate much like drones.
An Israeli military official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP that the army has been using "robotic tools for over a decade, but in very small numbers. Now it is being used in large-scale warfare".
Troops can now operate machinery without having to enter enemy territory, said the official.
Andrew Fox, a retired British army major and a research fellow at the London-based Henry Jackson Society, said the Israeli military was likely the first force to use remote-controlled combat machinery in an active war zone.
"It's a really big development" that is "changing the paradigm" of warfare, carrying out tasks as effectively but at a far reduced risk to personnel, he said.
But beyond ethical and legal drawbacks to such advanced technology, there is also the need for an overriding human presence to make decisions particularly in unusual situations.
Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war was a disastrous example for that, when Palestinian gunmen breached the high-security border, said Tal Mimran of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
"I think that October 7 showed us that you can build a wall that may cost $1 billion, but if you do not patrol the border, then someone will infiltrate your country," said Mimran, a lecturer and researcher of international law who has been closely following the Israeli military's technological developments.
"We must take note of the opportunities and of the risks of technology," he said.
"This is the era in which artificial intelligence is exploding into our lives, and it is only natural that it will also have a manifestation in the security field."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Asharq Al-Awsat
5 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Anthropic Says Looking to Power European Tech with Hiring Push
American AI giant Anthropic aims to boost the European tech ecosystem as it expands on the continent, product chief Mike Krieger told AFP Thursday at the Vivatech trade fair in Paris. The OpenAI competitor wants to be "the engine behind some of the largest startups of tomorrow... (and) many of them can and should come from Europe", Krieger said. Tech industry and political leaders have often lamented Europe's failure to capitalize on its research and education strength to build heavyweight local companies -- with many young founders instead leaving to set up shop across the Atlantic. Krieger's praise for the region's "really strong talent pipeline" chimed with an air of continental tech optimism at Vivatech. French AI startup Mistral on Wednesday announced a multibillion-dollar tie-up to bring high-powered computing resources from chip behemoth Nvidia to the region. The semiconductor firm will "increase the amount of AI computing capacity in Europe by a factor of 10" within two years, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang told an audience at the southern Paris convention center. Among 100 planned continental hires, Anthropic is building up its technical and research strength in Europe, where it has offices in Dublin and non-EU capital London, Krieger said. Beyond the startups he hopes to boost, many long-standing European companies "have a really strong appetite for transforming themselves with AI", he added, citing luxury giant LVMH, which had a large footprint at Vivatech. 'Safe by design' Mistral -- founded only in 2023 and far smaller than American industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic -- is nevertheless "definitely in the conversation" in the industry, Krieger said. The French firm recently followed in the footsteps of the US companies by releasing a so-called "reasoning" model able to take on more complex tasks. "I talk to customers all the time that are maybe using (Anthropic's AI) Claude for some of the long-horizon agentic tasks, but then they've also fine-tuned Mistral for one of their data processing tasks, and I think they can co-exist in that way," Krieger said. So-called "agentic" AI models -- including the most recent versions of Claude -- work as autonomous or semi-autonomous agents that are able to do work over longer horizons with less human supervision, including by interacting with tools like web browsers and email. Capabilities displayed by the latest releases have raised fears among some researchers, such as University of Montreal professor and "AI godfather" Yoshua Bengio, that independently acting AI could soon pose a risk to humanity. Bengio last week launched a non-profit, LawZero, to develop "safe-by-design" AI -- originally a key founding promise of OpenAI and Anthropic. 'Very specific genius' "A huge part of why I joined Anthropic was because of how seriously they were taking that question" of AI safety, said Krieger, a Brazilian software engineer who co-founded Instagram, which he left in 2018. Anthropic is still working on measures designed to restrict their AI models' potential to do harm, he added. But it has yet to release details of its "level 4" AI safety protections foreseen for still more powerful models, after activating ASL (AI Safety Level) 3 to corral the capabilities of May's Claude Opus 4 release. Developing ASL 4 is "an active part of the work of the company", Krieger said, without giving a potential release date. With Claude 4 Opus, "we've deployed the mitigations kind of proactively... safe doesn't have to mean slow, but it does mean having to be thoughtful and proactive ahead of time" to make sure safety protections don't impair performance, he added. Looking to upcoming releases from Anthropic, Krieger said the company's models were on track to match chief executive Dario Amodei's prediction that Anthropic would offer customers access to a "country of geniuses in a data center" by 2026 or 2027 -- within limits. Anthropic's latest AI models are "genius-level at some very specific things", he said. "In the coming year... it will continue to spike in particular aspects of things, and still need a lot of human-in-the-loop coordination," he forecast.
Arab News
17 hours ago
- Arab News
How emerging AI talent is shaping the future of smart healthcare in Saudi Arabia
RIYADH: As Saudi Arabia accelerates its investment in AI-powered healthcare, two young researchers from the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence are building the very tools that hospitals in the Kingdom will soon need — intelligent, interpretable, and scalable systems for diagnosis and prognosis. Although the university's 2025 cohort did not include Saudi nationals this year, the work of two standout graduates, Mohammed Firdaus Ridzuan and Tooba Tehreem Sheikh, directly aligns with Saudi Arabia's healthcare transformation plans under Vision 2030. Their research offers practical, forward-looking solutions for the Kingdom's next generation of smart hospitals. At a time when AI systems are being deployed across diagnostic units in Saudi hospitals, from the King Faisal Specialist Hospital to new initiatives backed by the Saudi Data and AI Authority, the focus is shifting from capability to clarity. Can the systems provide real-time support? Can they explain their reasoning? Can doctors intervene? These are the questions both Ridzuan and Sheikh have set out to answer. Ridzuan, a PhD graduate in machine learning, developed Human-in-the-Loop for Prognosis, or HuLP for short — a cancer survival prediction system that places doctors back at the center of AI-powered decision-making. 'While AI has made significant strides in diagnosing diseases, predicting individual survival outcomes, especially in cancer, is still a challenging task,' Ridzuan told Arab News. 'Our model addresses this by enabling real-time clinician intervention.' Unlike traditional models that operate in isolation, HuLP is built for collaboration. Medical professionals can adjust and refine its predictions using their clinical expertise. These adjustments are not just temporary; they influence how the model evolves. 'Doctors and medical professionals can actively engage with the system,' Ridzuan said. 'Their insights don't just influence the result — they actually help the model learn.' This approach to human-AI partnership ensures that predictions remain explainable, context-aware, and grounded in patient-specific realities, a key need for Saudi hospitals integrating AI at scale. 'By allowing clinicians to dynamically adjust predictions, we create a more adaptive and responsive system that can handle local challenges,' Ridzuan added. The Kingdom's healthcare institutions are undergoing a digital transformation driven by national entities like SDAIA, the Ministry of Health, and the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and Innovation. These entities are focused not only on adopting new AI tools but also on ensuring that these systems can integrate into clinical workflows. This is where Ridzuan sees HuLP making an impact. 'Smart hospitals are already integrating AI diagnostic tools for medical imaging and patient data analysis,' he said. 'Our model can take this to the next level by empowering clinicians to interact with and guide the system's predictions.' In settings where trust and transparency are vital, Ridzuan's collaborative model could help hospitals overcome one of AI's most persistent problems: the black box effect. This refers to the opaque nature of certain systems, particularly in the field of AI, where the internal workings and decision-making processes are hidden or unknown. The emphasis on local relevance also comes through in HuLP's design. Ridzuan says real-time data from regional healthcare systems is essential for training accurate, context-sensitive models. 'Local data provides insights into the unique health conditions and medical practices within the Gulf region,' he said. 'Integrating this data ensures that the AI is attuned to the specific needs and health profiles of patients in the region.' The system is built to learn continuously. As clinicians correct or refine its predictions, the model updates itself, improving with each interaction. This feedback loop is crucial for real-world deployments, especially in the Gulf, where data quality can be inconsistent. While Ridzuan is focused on outcomes, Sheikh, an MSc graduate in computer vision, is transforming the way hospitals detect disease in the first place. Her project, Med-YOLOWorld, is a next-generation imaging system that can read nine types of medical scans in real time. Unlike traditional radiology AI tools, which are often limited to specific tasks, Med-YOLOWorld operates with open-vocabulary detection. That means it can identify anomalies and organ structures that it has not been explicitly trained on — a key feature for scalability. 'Most models are confined to a single modality like CT or X-ray,' Sheikh told Arab News. 'Med-YOLOWorld supports nine diverse imaging types, including ultrasound, dermoscopy, microscopy, and histopathology.' With support for up to 70 frames per second, the system is designed for clinical deployment in high-demand environments. Sheikh sees clear potential for its use in Saudi Arabia, where institutions like the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre are already implementing multi-modal AI imaging tools. 'It can seamlessly integrate with existing imaging systems to enable open-vocabulary detection,' she said. 'Identifying a wide range of medical findings — even those outside its original training set — is essential for fast-paced clinical environments.' But building a universal imaging tool came with its own technical hurdles. 'The biggest challenge was managing the diverse preprocessing requirements across imaging modalities,' Sheikh said. 'CT and MRI scans need intensity normalization, while ultrasound, dermoscopy, and microscopy have completely different visual characteristics.' Data imbalance was another issue. While MRI and CT scans are widely available, data for more niche imaging types is scarce. Sheikh tackled this by designing custom augmentation techniques to ensure the model performs consistently across all modalities. She is now working on combining Med-YOLOWorld with vision-language models, systems that explain what they see in natural language. 'MiniGPT-Med does a great job at explaining radiology images,' she said. 'But pairing it with a system like Med-YOLOWorld adds a crucial dimension — open-world localization. Not just describing the issue but pointing to it.' This fusion could create a powerful end-to-end diagnostic pipeline: detect, explain, and localize. For Saudi hospitals embracing AI-driven imaging, the impact could be transformative. For Sheikh, the global implications of her work are just as important as the technical achievements. 'Med-YOLOWorld reduces the need for large, annotated datasets,' she said. 'In fast-scaling healthcare systems, that's a game-changer.' By enabling the detection of unseen categories, the system can remain relevant even as new diseases or anomalies emerge. And when combined with language models, it can assist in medical training, annotations, and decision support, all while reducing dependence on expert-labeled data. This approach could accelerate AI adoption in emerging regions, including across the Gulf and the wider Middle East and North Africa, where access to large datasets and AI-specialized radiologists remains limited. While MBZUAI is based in the UAE, its alumni are playing a growing role in shaping AI initiatives that extend across the Gulf. Both Ridzuan and Sheikh have demonstrated how innovation, when aligned with clinical realities and regional goals, can scale far beyond the lab. As Saudi Arabia continues to invest in smart hospitals, real-time imaging, and personalized care, tools like HuLP and Med-YOLOWorld represent the next wave of AI in healthcare: explainable, collaborative, and regionally adaptable. And with growing partnerships between research institutions, healthcare providers, and government entities, these systems may not be far from deployment in the Kingdom, paving the way for a more intelligent, human-centered approach to medical care.
Al Arabiya
3 days ago
- Al Arabiya
Gabbard says AI is speeding up intel work, including the release of the JFK assassination
Artificial intelligence is speeding up the work of America's intelligence services, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Tuesday. Speaking to a technology conference, Gabbard said AI programs, when used responsibly, can save money and free up intelligence officers to focus on gathering and analyzing information. The sometimes slow pace of intelligence work frustrated her as a member of Congress, Gabbard said, and continues to be a challenge. AI can run human resource programs, for instance, or scan sensitive documents ahead of potential declassification, Gabbard said. Her office has released tens of thousands of pages of material related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, on the orders of President Donald Trump. Experts had predicted the process could take many months or even years, but AI accelerated the work by scanning the documents to see if they contained any material that should remain classified, Gabbard said during her remarks at the Amazon Web Services Summit in Washington. 'We have been able to do that through the use of AI tools far more quickly than what was done previously — which was to have humans go through and look at every single one of these pages,' Gabbard said. The intelligence community already relies on many private-sector technologies, and Gabbard said she wants to expand that relationship instead of using federal resources to create expensive alternatives. 'How do we look at the available tools that exist — largely in the private sector — to make it so that our intelligence professionals, both collectors and analysts, are able to focus their time and energy on the things that only they can do," she said. Gabbard, who coordinates the work of 18 intelligence agencies, has vowed to shake up America's spy services. Since assuming her role this year, she has created a new task force to consider changes to agency operations as well as greater declassification. She also has fired two veteran intelligence officers because of perceived opposition to Trump, eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs and relocated the staff who prepare the President's Daily Brief to give her more direct control.
