Cost reduction the primary reason?
In a word, yes I tend to think so. But I wouldn't call such a process an "amoral calculation", (
Vaughn, The Challenger Launch Decision), in the sense that the risk was understood but the economic goals outweighed the perceived risks. Amoral calculation is perhaps too blunt a term. Automation makes sense as presently implemented; what the regulator and the industry have each left as a sidebar and largely unaddressed is the long-term effects upon highly-skilled human contributions to the safety of flight.
For most legacy carriers, the payroll alone for flight crews is second only to fuel costs, (
debatable today - with both having plummetted over the differing periods of time, it's perhaps a toss-up which is lower, but they're not third or fourth). The industry is finding the pipelines drying up and autonomous flight provides an enticement not previously, realistically available.
As I have posted in earlier contributions, this is something like aviation's "Turing test"; there are obvious impediments to the notion of autonomous flight, the first being the thinking that someone on the ground writing software and firmware is somehow equal-to/better-than someone in the cockpit who is highly-trained, experienced,
human and
there, (with skin in the game).
These impediments are, in my (untrained/inexperienced in AI) eye, presently insurmountable but if one accepts that the fatal accident rate may climb "acceptably", (this is a perception/insurance/social issue, not a technical issue), then trials and targeted implementation may not be insurmountable while the concept is established towards "normal".
Some may accept that self-parking cars, UAVs and the like are "equivalents" to these goals; I think such perceptions are just magical thinking, not that dreaming is bad, but in aviation, there are no such things as sky-hooks, even in imaginative solutions to the problems of flight.
Airlines don't care about risk,
Well, of course they do care, a lot, and put tons of money behind that caring but I do understand what you're saying; the costs involved as a result of failing to care puts airlines out of business. We don't have to look far for examples.