How will a computer judge a weather report,a required fuel figure based on assumed hold at lhr,or eventual night fog somewhere else.? Will you ,as a pax, trust a machine to avoid a cb,use the radar smartly to find best course through a ts area?
will a computer know that it should expect turbulance landing shortly after a heavy departure,or that those unsignificant long clouds can sometimes indicate severe turbulance,or...
I think a machine can outperform a human in many ways,but untill we'll have a cyborg on deck we'll see human pilots up in front.Even Enterprise had human pilots,excepting Data,of course.Which was one of a kind.
It is possible to build an automated plane even today,but my guess you won't find pax to fly with it.And , as Daysleeper said,no auto freighter too soon,either.
Tell your teacher that Airbus or whoever ,did built the automated plane.Will he be the first pasanger to try it,fly from Paris to Bangkok tomorow? Of course,with a fat insurance,just in case Bill mistaped some small software string.
I won't.