Interesting thread evolution… looks like the inevitability of a pilotless passenger aircraft is dawning on upon us. The journey towards that goal will begin with reducing numbers of crew on the aircraft and the de-skilling of the profession.
I recall the utter bliss when CPDLC first arrived, no more bloody HF and then it occurred to me that there was no reason why the data needed to go through me to be activated. That, to me, spelled the beginning of the end of flying as a profession. Since then every subsequent improvement in technology has made the pilot ever more more redundant. Along the way safety has improved by orders of magnitude.
Totally unmanned is still a fair way off, but nonetheless inevitable.