Unfortunately, the negative impact of killing civilians currently seems to be... minimal.
And maybe always has been, internationally-speaking?
It would be nice to reform UN and supra-national rules of warfare in light of modern developments.
Even a "this is an acceptable ratio of civilian collateral deaths, above which constitutes a war crime" would be helpful for curtailing nation's baser urges.
> And maybe always has been, internationally-speaking?
If I had to guess, it was even less. Now at least there can be media backlash.
> Even a "this is an acceptable ratio of civilian collateral deaths, above which constitutes a war crime" would be helpful for curtailing nation's baser urges.
Having some kind of metric would be nice. However, there are problems with it being too simple (your enemy has a say in how exposed their civilians are; and we'd hate to leave countries with less precision in their militaries without the ability to defend themselves).
But popping off half-cocked often results in bad outcomes, so there's a tradeoff between decision quality and decision time.
In theory, having AI in the loop could improve both. In practice, I suspect you're right.