Getting the public and regulators to go along with single, or no human pilot up front would be extremely difficult. It would require a massive culture change, only brought about by a significant event which would require such a drastic change.
It would take something like a large number of pilots losing their medical due to some novel disease, or maybe the consequences of its rushed experimental pharmaceutical treatment.
Such a catastrophe would be substantial enough to require a massive shift in thinking about autonomous aircraft in the interest of maintaining air services. People are more accepting of sub-optimal choices when they’ve been scared and pressured into them.
So I doubt something like that would ever happen. The aircraft/airline industry is very good at not relying on single-point-of-failure systems, always maintaining alternate options to avoid catastrophic failures. Regulators maintain a very close watch over them, facilitated by their massive and ever growing budgets.
I believe PolitiFact did a check on the autonomous cockpit story, and it labeled it as “Lier lier, pants on fire”. So nothing to see really.