Mr. Optimistic, the article is behind the WSJ pay wall, so I tried to respected that by keeping the excerpt brief. However the jest of the article is that NASA foresees a critical pilot shortage in the next 20 years. Single pilot airliners would obviously help alleviate any such pilot shortage (no comment on the reality basis of such an upcoming shortage).
R-C would be a logic choice for such a NASA funded study, given they are responsible for much of the current flight deck automation systems.
BTW, roughly 25 years ago while I was in the middle of a major flight test program (new engines on the 767), I was a bit surprised that during weekend flight testing the right seat pilot was often quite young and raw. When I asked about it I was informed that the right seat pilot was really only there to get the plane home if the left seat pilot became incapacitated. Oh, and the left seat pilots were always top notch (at the time it was usually John Cashman - later to become the Chief Boeing test pilot). Most of the Boeing test pilots are top notch stick and rudder guys - I've been on a number of cheek-clenching flight test maneuvers and they've always pulled them perfectly (think holding a 747 in a 20 degree yaw 5k above ground level for 30+ seconds, taking a 767 from 80 deg. left bank to 80 degree right bank at the max roll rate, or seemingly endless hours of stalls and 'wind up turns' (I'm not prone to motion sickness, but 3+ hours of wind-up turns did the trick)). Am I ready to ride along while a computer did all that unassisted, without human backup? Hell no
But letting a computer put the aircraft on the ground if that great FT pilot becomes incapacitated? I'm not sure I'm ready to dismiss that.