It's all about facts and values.
Insofar as aviation provides an objectively regulated and fact-based means of transporting or being transported from A to B, one might consider such procedures ripe for encapsulation in algorithms designed to automate air crew/ATC responsibilities.
However, just as a chess computer cannot experience the joy of trouncing a foe, or the heart-sinking knowledge of defeat, and can therefore only ever replicate the appearance of understanding chess, such human responsibilities cannot be fully understood by any concievable system of Artificial Intelligence.
When such a system were to come up against a problem which exceeded its design limitations, as surely it would (unless the programmers were omniscient!), human intervention would be paramount. The physical presence of a skilled human operator - armed not only with reason, but also human experience, imagination and empathy - might then save an aircraft from what might otherwise be its impending mindless doom.
Even in a no-win situation, we are all aware of the tabloid cliche of the pilot of a stricken aircraft struggling to avoid a village school during his final moments. However, such things do happen.
I am not a religious man, but with such ludicrous idolatry of Artificial Intelligence we diminish ourselves and tempt fate.