Originally Posted by
Atlas Shrugged
The biggest thing with automation at the moment is that it is not 'complete' automation. Partial automation is a huge issue - having a pilot who's supposed to take over when the system craps itself, but who otherwise does nothing............... he's only there for when the going gets really tough, but the automation won't always keep him in the loop, or keep him in practice, but will still expect him to go from brain dead to aviation hero in an instant.
At some point the technology will become reliable enough but it is nowhere even remotely near that right now. First, you have to assume that the programmers will make NO ERRORS (!), and second, that they will think of EVERYTHING (!!) or come up with an AI that can HANDLE EVERYTHING (!!!).
I expect they'll be working on it for many, many, years before it ever becomes viable.
You're capturing something I've been trying to say for a while. To be even more succinct (something I'm not good at) -- right now we're in a gap, where the baton of ultimate responsibility is being passed from human pilots to the automation - but it's not a smooth pass, and there's no one to hold it in the interim.