All commercial passenger airliners flying today are already equipped with at least two of the most complex processors known to man: the human brain.
These devices consist of a network of 100 billion neurons - (each neuron a mini computer in itself) - and are able to adapt and predict and plan ahead in real time. They also produce "what if?" scenarios. The vision system alone has been developed and refined for millions of years - It uses short and long term memory resources to enhance the processed vision from the eyes to construct a real time three dimensional predictive situational awareness.
Even so, these incredibly complex devices, are not perfect. They can become tired, they make mistakes, there are errors of perception and vision. Therefore a way of operating aircraft safely has been gradually developed over the years to try to mitigate against failures and shortcomings as they become known.
What is happening in aviation today is that it has become locked into a descending spiral of ever lowering operating costs to encourage an increasing number of people to fly. This will generate profits and bonuses for the owners and shareholders, but to facilitate these lower costs, pilots (and crews) are being utilised beyond what is sensible and safe. We are technically allowed and required to fly when we are tired. Training time and quality is being reduced. Ground school - to learn the intricacies of the aircraft systems - are often reduced to computer based training, where, with enough practice, the tests can be passed without any true understanding of those systems and how that relates to operating the aircraft on a dark stormy night.
So mistakes are happening and passengers are quite rightly concerned. The answer is not to develop more and more computers to take over from the pilots - we have enough computers already. Most, (except those such as TCAS and EGPWS etc.) remove the pilot further and further away from engagement and situational awareness of their flight. Autothrust, for example, removes the need to constantly monitor and adjust the aircraft speed. We should of course always monitor our speed very carefully, but when it is operated by a computer that rarely gets this (simple linear parameter) wrong, monitoring is perhaps not as rigorously performed as it should be. Then, one day, you get pilots who have not done 'proper' groundschool to fully understand their systems; have not practised flying with manual thrust; and fly with the autopilot engaged so often; that they literally sit and allow the speed to decay to 30 knots slow on approach without doing anything about it, and just watch as their aircraft crashes around them !
I think the answer is not to spend time and resources trying to build computers to replace pilots - such a thing would be a waste of time and take decades to even work reliably enough - let alone convince the flying public; But those resources should instead be directed to proper pilot training and sensible rosters.
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