Sorry for taking this on such a weird tangent, but I've been reading the Culture stories and my immediate thinking was - why not? Missiles fly for a relatively long time compared to human decision making, let alone compared to optimized AI agents. There's notechnical barrier to having the missile be controlled by a conversational AI to which the intended recipient could appeal, negotiating with it to change its course.

I'm obviously not arguing that this is a good idea, but I wouldn't be that surprised if this is the future trajectory (sorry for the pun) of "smart weapons".

And you can get a fat payday in court years after the cops dogpile you for a dumb reason. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't bring back the time lost to injury. Doesn't bring back the things that money you pissed into legal fees could've been spent on.

An appeals process isn't a magic uno reverse card that makes a morally reprehensible fact pattern ok. Capricious and/or vibe and/or "Signature based" (vibes with extra steps IMO) application of government violence is reprehensible regardless of the amount of violence applied.

Trying to anchor the discussion around "whole lives" is just lying MBA accounting but for social issues. At the state level life, limb, quality of life and wealth (monetary or otherwise) are all subject to inter related tradeoffs and are somewhat fungible and convertible.