The most revealing part of the VF article is the following:
Over time the automation will expand to handle in-flight failures and emergencies, and as the safety record improves, pilots will gradually be squeezed from the cockpit altogether. The dynamic has become inevitable. There will still be accidents, but at some point we will have only the machines to blame.
Right now if you dare blaming any machine, you get grilled and shouted down by the usual crowd, or should i say lobbyists. The machine seems to get away with almost everything, it's always the failure of the human of not having memorised well enough the ways the machine wants to get interpreted and operated.
The last sentence points at a almost philosophical (yes, PJ2), albeit inevitably realistic fact, that at some point even all the manufacturers and regulators will have to get out of their denial mode, pull their heads out of the sand and they will be confronted with only their machine.
What will happen then? It's anyones guess, but i gather that there will be no reversal of the trend, there will simply be another machine invented and sold overpriced to supervise and control the former machine. And by then it most probably also be capable of making a selfie!
It's only the world we are craving for.