Craigeedee
From your earlier posts you are still quite young (lucky you) so don’t take stuff on PPRuNe personally.
O’Leary runs Ryanair and is considered by some to be anti pilots (sorry FLR I was away when you posted)
Your question it is one that a lot of serious research organisations are giving considerable thought to as a way of improving safety through more automation.
First and foremost DO NOT let the chances of pilot-less passenger aircraft happening affect the way you pursue your ambitions. A couple of months before I was due to get my RAF wings in 1957 the Minister of Defence of the day announced that the RAF would use no more manned fighters so those on my course who were expected to go to fighters were sent home on indefinite leave. After a while common sense sorted things out and off to fighters we went.
Back to your question. Leter I went test flying and in 1964 happened to be involved in some early attempts at getting a jet airliner of the day (a Comet) to do automatic landings. The tests were to see if the automatics had the ‘skill’ to do strong crosswind landings. One afternoon after doing several with over 30 kts gusting across the runway I said to the crew that if the automatics dumped (I was the safety pilot) I would not be attempting a manual landing where we were but would need to find a runway closer to the wind. That was the day (remember this was 42 years ago) that I became convinced that automatics could fly better than me.
But that did not mean that overnight automatics were going to ‘take control’ from crews.
The next issue was whether they could be made reliable enough and the CAA required them to cause a landing crash no more than once in 10 million landings before they would clear them for passenger use. Since then countless autolands with passengers have been carried out around the world without causing a single crash. Indeed one airline I know insists the crew use an autoland following an engine failure even if the weather is lovely because it is safer than hoping the crew will get it right manually.
But, and it is a big but, none of us would be happy in seats down the back if we knew there were not a couple of guys locked away up the front who would give it a go if the all the automatics quit. And I doubt human nature will change that much in your lifetime.
The job the guys will do behind the locked door will be different as the years progress but have no doubt they will be in charge of the flight not the computers.
Cargo will be the first (and perhaps also the last) place where automatics will do it all – because you and your generation may well price themselves out of the cockpit unless there are people in seats behind you.