I've noticed in this discussion pilots tend to be ego centric and not think outside their own sphere. There is no single answer because there are so many different types of operation. As others have pointed out; aircraft types have different levels of automation, air force is different to airline, short haul is different to long haul, expat is different to legacy, Europe is different to Australia etc etc etc. The matrix is large.
At this stage of my career I've done them all and in my current operation the airlines policy of maximum use of automation suits me just fine.
New gen airliners are actually easy to fly manually, and I will postulate that when you really drill down into the causes of most recent accidents, the ability to accurately fly an IFR approach or departure was irrelevant.
I don't expect pilotless airliners for a couple of generations but the automatics are going to get progressively better. Sooner or later the insurance actuaries will have a case that the accident rate is lower if you eliminate manual flight altogrther. There will be a slight risk but it will be judged to be outweighed by the advantages.
We're not there yet but it's close...