Age old comparison of train drivers and aircraft pilots, and in my opinion (biased of course I know) there is no comparison. The general public have absolutely no idea about the decisions involved on a day to day basis of flying an aircraft from A to B. From fuel to appropriate diversions to overriding of the automatics (selected speed on approach for example instead of the aircraft requested speed) happens on a day to day basis. Not only that but on regular occasions aircraft have severe issues from hydraulic failures to low fuel states to thunderstorms at both arrival airfield and diversion airfield etc etc. The complexity of the job is generally played down by pilots as we all have it driven in to us to always make everyone feel safe about flying. In my humble opinion if the general public knew what goes on worldwide on a day to day basis then they would think pilots are extremely important. All the talk of technology being 100% reliable if it's advanced enough is false. The complexity required to design such a piece of equipment would be so immense that it would be impossible (at least for several lifetimes to come). Big picture stuff, a train goes from A to B on a fixed line. It can be controlled very simply with a main computer system that ensures two trains don't collide and the train stops at the appropriate points. Aircraft do not and never will go from A to B on a fixed route, they simply cannot (take weather for example).
We also have a lot of people who will comment on how it wouldn't be too difficult to do so given advances in technology. Having recently had an emergency and diverted due to reasons I won't discuss here, not one single passenger (OR cabin crew member I'll add) had any idea that we were potentially in very serious trouble. In fact at the diversion airfield they were banging on about how they could get their bags back - they were totally oblivious to the potential danger we faced. I will also add that they were oblivious to the potential danger we faced because we as pilots felt it was not appropriate to tell them what was going on......
Luckily I have found from experience that the vast majority of passengers don't think we are "computer monitors" although I have shocked a few passengers visiting the flight deck when showing them that we have a sidestick (one passengers jaw dropped when I told her we land the aircraft manually on basically every single flight).