Automation vs AI
"An automated control system may well have opted for heading for the nearest airport if the figures indicated it was possible to glide there. The automated system might then be caught out by windshear nearing final approach and landing, because that was a factor it was unable to detect in advance. So the aircraft could have landed short and hit buildings killing everone aboard and causing casualties on the ground. A human pilot will at least consider the possibility and additional risks of windshear and act accordingly.
Automation can only act in accordance with the information it receives from its sensors. It cannot autonomously consider the possibility of events for which there are no data, so it is pointless and impossible to plan ahead for every eventuality."
This is not correct, although perhaps right for a non-AI system. The quote above is responding only to the old fashioned style - complete detail programmed by humans - and only then where the humans left out factoring in wind shear and obstructions.
AI stands for "artificial intelligence" for a reason: an AI system does not simply reproduce what a programmer intended. A "strong AI" system is best thought of us an intelligent creature, not just a collection of rules. A "strong AI" system can be trained, and it can draw inferences and make deductions. In other words, it can think - certainly today not in the same way as a human, but far differently from a simple programmed control system. It may be use simulated neurons ("neural nets") or other technologies or more likely, combinations.
Today, strong AI is not to the point where it can replace a pilot's judgement. It may never be, but there is a good chance that it could be. The strong AI, coupled with the power of ordinary automation (sensors, actuators, physics calculations, decision trees, etc) may some day very well exceed the capacity of the very best pilot. I think that day will come. I think the strong AI problem is harder for automated cars than aircraft, and the push for autonomous automobiles is very strong. Cars are far less complex, but they encounter, on a routine basis, a very wide variety of situations where physics is only the start of the problem - for example, dealing a ball that bounces into a residential street.
In such a world, one might take a strong AI system and literally train it the way you would train a human pilot. But, once trained, it can be replicated - the training for one "pilot" produces thousands of immortal pilots. More likely, a whole lot of the flight smarts would be pre-coded as rules, with the strong AI there for the overall management and unexpected scenarios.