Where's the business case?
Basic reason this is not actually going to happen in the lifetime of any current PPruner is: No Business Case for the foreseeable future.
It will happen when customer demand can be met at a sufficiently low price for manufacturers to make money supplying and operators to make money using them. That will depend on price and demand.
However fancy the tin brain, the price will depend heavily on certification cost which will probably be very very high.
As for demand,
(1) Are airline customers (pax) demanding it? No. I don't see demonstrators outside even Ryanair's office with placards saying "£5.99's too much, get rid of those pilots".
(2) Are airline customers (freight) demanding it? No but they can see more possibilities because (1) doesn't concern them.
(3) Are airlines demanding it? No but they will monitor any developments so as not be caught out if there is a change in (1) or (2)
(4) with no immediate customer demand, manufacturers are hedging their bets by putting small amounts into watching developments by non-airline players.
Why should we care about ill-informed journalists pontificating in the press?
Because it is distracts attention from fixing things that really need fixing, like getting instrument vertical guidance on every approach used for commercial aviation.
A lot of the discussion has focussed on landings. What about takeoff?
Autopilot takeoff is trivial compared to autoland. I first took part in autolands with pax on board 50 years ago, but 3 aircraft generations later no-one has built a commercial aircraft with an auto takeoff system - there's no business benefit to doing it.
Lifting max t/o weight is the most important parameter in the business case for buying a specific aircraft. Certification is based on engine failure only and does not take full account of many other factors (variable surface conditions etc). Basic performance standards were written in the 1960s (ICAO SCAP /Airworthiness Committee etc) and no commercial enterprise (manufacturer or operator) wants to reopen that issue. That's why grandfather rights and "new models" of old types are so important. However any auto system implementation will have to recognise and find a way to deal with these. That will inevitably result in lower max weights off the same runways - probably for ALL commercial aircraft not just pilotless. (if Hence no business incentive to develop auto takeoff.
Question for the YES side.
A pilotless airliner with 400 pax. is taking off in the correct configuration. At VR a system detects a changed status of a physical system. A/C protection software automatically reconfigures aircraft to settings appropriate to changed status. The new configuration puts a/c immediately outside the flight envelope and makes it almost incapable of flight. This condition had not been considered in any certification fault tree analysis.
(a) what do you envisage would happen to this pilotless a/c?
(b) which organisations will volunteer to be liable for the consequences?