TECHNOLOGY
Algorithmic Targeting
The class of AI-enabled military and intelligence systems that generate target recommendations from pattern-matching over surveillance data — Suchman's sharpest case study of what happens when plans are treated as actions at machine speed.
Algorithmic targeting refers to the class of AI and machine-learning systems that identify potential military targets by pattern-matching over signal intelligence, communications metadata, movement data, and other surveillance streams. Systems of this kind have been deployed in various forms since the early 2000s and have accelerated dramatically with the capabilities of contemporary machine learning. Suchman's recent work has made algorithmic targeting one of the most consequential case studies in the critical analysis of AI, because the gap between generated plans and encountered situations — her foundational framework — has lethal consequences when outputs are accepted without adequate evaluation. Her analyses describe what she has called 'the algorithmically accelerated killing machine,' where the volume of target nominations overwhelms the capacity of humans in the loop to deliberate.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Algorithmic targeting systems operate on the structure of AI outputs as plans. The system processes surveillance data and produces a classification: this pattern of signals or