What "choosing the target" means has been fuzzy for a long time too. We've had beyond-visible-range missiles for a long time that are basically "fly to this grid square and find a target".
I don't think people realize how much horsepower are in missiles now.
The JSM has at least one multicore computer + IR camera + RF homing for target identification (plus GPS, terrain matching/following and inertial for navigation). It can automatically identify not only the best target (and recognize and ignore decoys etc), but also the optimal weak spots to impact.
The stats of USA using human-guided drones to kill people. A civilian/military ratio and numbers was worse that 11.9.
Heck, check the American drone war crime video Wikileaks published. The one that made the USA so angry that it decided to attack and destroy the journalists.
Only the USA has enough war experience and drones for us to have high confidence stats on the performance of human drone operators (military vs. civilian targets) vs. AI.
Stats from Russia/Ukraine are not good. And the ones that exist, could be dismissed for various reasons ("Russians are savages so it doesn't count", "Ukraine is defending itself in existential war so it doesn't count").
With the USA the stats are available and no valid excuses exist to throw the data away. The US military is not defending itself and is supposed to be the most powerful, advanced (tech and policy) and professional military in the world. They are the best case scenario for the human drone operators' performance one has. And yet:
I am amused about how emotional people get about AI killing people. In my mind the idea that someone sitting at a screen chosing to blow up other humans is frankly far more terrifying.
Agree. That's why autopilots in airplanes have a much better track record than flesh pilots. And when the autopilot screws up, there is a clear path to improvement, to make sure that the situation will never repeat itself. With humans, people continue to make the same mistakes, no matter how many times it happened before (even for the same pilots).