"you will watch black boxes take off without you within 20 years."
It will never happen. Apart from the passengers not accepting it, (they are nervous enough now with human crew), there is the security issue.
Terrorists are becoming ever more sophisticated and the idea that you can have aircraft aloft, full of PAX but no pilots is, to be honest, quite ridiculous.
It would be Oh so too easy for terrorist to either, a). Take over a ground controlling station and then cause mayhem or b). Set up transmission equipment that will over-ride the official ground equipment. A few dedicated suicide terrorists for case a). and a few dedicated hackers for case b). Every new computer security invention is hacked within weeks at the moment.
Next, try to find insurance cover that will even look at you when you tell them you want to fly a pilot less aircraft worth $150,000,000 and 350 passengers at liability coverage of $1,000,000 each into major airports where third party insurance requirements run to thousands of millions of $, as I said at the beginning, it will never happen.