In the same way targeted surveillance from 50 years ago was different from the total surveillance of everyone today, or in the way air strikes from 2 decades ago are different from the tens of thousands of drones strikes that the US launches every year, a number that is bound to increase at least another ten fold if the drones strikes are automated.

The differences are cost and scope. The cheaper it is, the easier it is move from doing it to "highly-valuable and highly-like to be guilty targets" to increasingly more innocent people (because "why not?"). That's how the governments think (unless the people strongly oppose these new changes).